
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
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Cliiip.. Copyright No. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Ian Maclaren Year-Book 



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TWO COPIES RECEIVED 






Copyright, i8q4, i8qj, i8gb, i8q7, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company, 

Copyright, iSqs, i8gb, 
By John Watson. 



?antijrrsttg ^irrss : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



DRUMTOCHTY in its length, which was 
eight miles, and its breadth, which was 
four, lay in his hand ; besides a glen behind, 
unknown to the world, which in the night 
time he visited at the risk of life, for the way 
tliereto was across the big moor with its peat 
holes and treacherous bogs. And he held the 
land eastwards towards Muirtown so far as the 
Drumtochty post travelled every day, and 
could carry word that the doctor was wanted. 
He did his best for the need of every man, 
woman, and child in this wild, straggling dis- 
trict, year in, year out, in the snow and in the 
heat, in the dark and in the light, without 
rest, and without holiday for forty years. 

A Doctor of tlie Old School. 



HE could not make townspeople understand 
the unutterable satisfaction of the 
country minister, who even from old age and 
great cities looks back with fond regret to his 
first parish on the slope of the Grampians. 
Some kindly host wrestles with him to stay a 
few days more in civilisation, and pledges him 
to run up whenever he wearies of his exile, and 
the ungrateful rustic can hardly conceal the joy 
of his escape. He shudders on the way to the 
station at the drip of the dirty sleet and the 
rags of the shivering poor, and the restless faces 
of the men and the unceasing roar of the traffic. 
Where he is going the white snow is falling 
gently on the road, a cart full of sweet-smelling 
roots is moving on velvet, the driver stops to 
exchange views with a farmer who has been 
feeding his sheep, within the humblest cottage 
the fire is burning clearly. With every mile 
northwards the Glenman's heart lifts ; and as 
he lands on his far-away little station, he draws 
a deep breath of the clean, wholesome air. It 
is a long walk through the snow, but there is a 
kindly, couthy smell from the woods, and at 
sight of the squares of light in his home, weari- 
ness departs from a Drumtochty man. 

/Caie Carnegie. 



January i 

THE world had its own idea of blessedness. 
Blessed is the man who is always right. 
Blessed is the man who is satisfied with himself. 
Blessed is the man who is strong. Blessed is 
the man who rules. Blessed is the man who 
is rich. Blessed is the man who is popular. 
Blessed is the man who enjoys life. These are 
the beatitudes of sight and this present world. 
It comes with a shock and opens a new realm 
of thought, that not one of these men entered 
Jesus' mind when He treated of blessedness. 

The Mind of Die Master. 

January i 

""OLESSED," said Jesus, " is the man who 
JZ) thinks lowly of himself; who has 
passed through great trials ; who gives in and 
endures ; who longs for perfection ; who carries 
a tender heart ; who has a passion for holiness ; 
who sweetens human life ; who dares to be 
true to conscience." What a conception of 
character ! Blessed are the humble, the peni- 
tents, the victims, the mystics, the philanthro- 
pists, the saints, the mediators, the confessors. 
For the first time a halo rests on gentleness, 
patience, kindness, and sanctity, and the eight 
men of the beatitudes divide the kingdom of 
God. 

Tlie Mind of the Master. 



January 3 

ON the first Sabbath of the year the people 
were in the second verse of the Hundredth 
Psahn, when Milton, with his family, came 
into the kirk and took possession of their pew. 
Hillocks maintained an unobtrusive but vigi- 
lant watch, and had no fault to find this time 
with Milton. The doctor preached on the 
Law of Love, as he had a way of doing at 
the beginning of each year, and was quite 
unguarded in his eulogium of brotherly kind- 
ness, but Milton did not seem to find anything 
wrong in the sermon. Four times — Hillocks 
kept close to facts — he nodded in grave ap- 
proval, and once, when the doctor insisted 
with great force that love did more than every 
power to make men good, Milton was evidently 
carried, and blew his nose needlessly. 

TJie Days of A uld Lang Syne. 

January 4 

" "\7'OU Ml not leave without breakin' bread ; 
X it ' s little we hae, but we can offer ye oat- 
cake an' milk in token o' oor loyalty." And 
then Bell brought the elements of Scottish food ; 
and when Marjorie's lips moved in prayer as 
they ate, it seemed to Carnegie and his daughter 
like a sacrament. So the two went from the 
fellowship of the poor to their ancient house. 

Kate Carnegie. 



January 5 

JESUS nowhere commanded that one cling 
to His Cross, He everywhere commanded 
that one carry His Cross, and out of this daily 
crucifixion has been born the most beautiful 
sainthood from St. Paul to St. Francis, from 
A Kempis to George Herbert. For " there is 
no salvation of the soul nor hope of everlasting 
life but in the Cross." 

Ttie Mind of the Master. 



January 6 

THAT minister who receives a body of 
people more or less cast down, and 
wearied in the great battle of the soul, and 
sends them forth full of good cheer and enthu- 
siasm, has done his work and deserved well of 
his people. He has shown himself a true 
shepherd, and he had not done this service 
without knowing both the Will of God and 
the life of man, without draining a wide water- 
shed of experience — from high hills where the 
soul has been alone with God, and from deep 
valleys where the soul has tasted the agonies of 
life — into the stream that shall be the motive 
power of many lives on the plains beneath. 

The Cure of Sauls. 



January 7 

CERTAINLY it must be useful for prac- 
tical men, whose life-work is to be 
preaching, to compare notes on the various 
methods of preparation, believing that as the 
blessing of the Divine Spirit will only rest on 
the outcome of hard, honest work, the more 
thorough and skilful that work is, the more 
likely is it to be crowned with prosperity. 

TJte Cure of Sotds. 

January 8 

NEXT Sabbath the kirkyard was thrown into 
a state approaching excitement by Jamie 
Soutar, who, in the course of some remarks on 
the prospects of harvest, casually mentioned 
that Burnbrae had been refused his lease, and 
would be leaving Dmmtochty at Martinmas. 

"What for?" said Drumsheugh sharply; 
while Hillocks, who had been offering his box 
to Whinnie, remained with outstretched arm. 

" Naethin' that ye wud expeck, but juist 
some bit differ wi' the new factor aboot leavin' 
his kirk an' jining the lave o' us in the Auld 
Kirk. Noo, if it hed been ower a cattle reed 
ye cud hae understude it, but for a man — " 

"Nae mair o' yir havers, Jamie," broke in 
Drumsheugh, "and keep yir tongue aff Burn- 
brae ; man, ye gied me a fricht." 

The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



January 9 

WHEN one is richly endowed and carefully 
trained, and has come to the zenith of 
his power, his sudden removal seems a reflec- 
tion on the economy of God's kingdom. Why 
call this man to the choir celestial when he is so 
much needed in active service ? According to 
Jesus, he has not sunk into inaction, so much 
subtracted from the forces of righteousness. 
He has gone where the fetters of this body of 
humiliation and embarrassment of adverse cir- 
cumstances shall be no longer felt. We must 
not think of him as withdrawn from the field ; 
we must imagine him as in the van of battle. 
We must follow him, our friend, with hope 
and a high heart. xke Mind of the Master. 

January 10 

No man knew what the minister of Kilbogie 
might not ask — he was only perfectly 
certain that it would be beyond his knowledge ; 
but as Saunderson always gave the answer 
himself in the end, and imputed it to the stu- 
dent, anxiety was reduced to a minimum. 
Saunderson, indeed, was In the custom of pass- 
ing all candidates and reporting them as mar- 
vels of erudition, whose only fault was a 
becoming modesty — which, however, had not 
concealed from his keen eye hidden treasures 
of learning. ^^^^ Camest<r. 



January 1 1 

WHEN a prophet and his environment are 
adjusted, his speeches are re-issued 
with illustrations which have a very practical 
application to our day : when the Book of 
Ecclesiastes is referred to the days of the third 
century B.C. then its note is caught, and any 
man who has been wronged and embittered by 
political tyranny and social corruption has his 
bitter cry included in the Book of God. 

The Cure of Souls. 

January 12 

"T~\IV ye mean tae say," as soon as Mains 

J ' had recovered, "that ye've brocht 

naethin' for the manse but bukes, naither bed 
nor bedding? Keep's a'," as the situation 
grew upon him, " whar are ye tae sleep, and 
what are ye tae sit on ? An' div ye never eat ? 
This croons a';" and Mains gazed at his new 
minister as one who supposed that he had taken 
Jeremiah's measure and had failed utterly. 

*' Mea culpa — it's . . . my blame," and 
Saunderson was evidently humbled at this 
public exposure of his incapacity ; " some slight 
furnishing will be expedient, even necessary, 
and I have a plan for book-shelves in my head ; 
it is ingenious and convenient, and if there is a 
worker in wood ..." 

Kate Carnegie. 



January 13 

IT is a necessity of the human mind to theo- 
rise about truth ; it is a calamity to sub- 
stitute theories for truth. One almost despairs 
at times because we seem the victims of an 
irresistible tendency to ignore the real, and to 
be content with the artificial. No sooner has 
some man of genius painted a picture or con- 
ceived a poem, or even made a speech with 
moral intention, than people set themselves to 
invent amazing meanings and applications, and 
raise such a dust of controversy that the original 
effect is utterly lost. The Mindofthe Master. 

January 14 

GRANTED that some people go to church 
to whom worship must be a vain show, 
and that others remain at home to whom it is a 
spiritual reality, it were quite absurd to divide 
people into public worshippers who are profes- 
sional hypocrites, and private worshippers who 
are unattached saints. As a bare matter of 
fact, believing people do, as a nile, go to church, 
and unbelieving people, as a rule, do not : and 
in order to show that one is not using faith in a 
dogmatic but a vigorous sense, it may be suffi- 
cient to point out that on the Church — her 
teaching, her influence, her example — the whole 
system of charity and philanthropy depends in 
the Western world. The Cure of Souls. 



January 15 

IT seemed to me, watching things in Drum- 
tochty during those days with an impartial 
mind, that the Doctor, with his care for the 
poor, his sympathy for the oppressed, his inter- 
est in everything human, his shrewd, practical 
wisdom, and his wide toleration, was the very 
ideal of the parish clergyman. He showed me 
much courtesy while I lived in the Cottage, 
although I did not belong to his communion ; 
and as my imagination re-constructs the old 
parish of a winter night by the fire, I miss him 
as he used to be on the road, in the people's 
homes, in his pulpit, among his books — ever 
an honourable and kind-hearted gentleman. 

Kate Carnegie. 

January 16 

IT might well seem that the using of his room 
were enough guerdon, but Jesus had still 
something in store for His friend. The last 
time they met beneath the olives the goodman 
had pledged Jesus to come to his house before 
He went to the Cross, and Jesus had kept the 
tryst, as all the Church of God below knoweth ; 
and then before they parted Jesus would pledge 
the goodman to visit Him in His house after he 
was done with earth, and one day the goodman 
kept this other tryst, as the Church of God 
above knoweth. rite Upper Room. 



January 17 



" "\ T THAT richt hes ony man tae hand ower 
V V the families that hev been on his es- 
tate afore he wes born tae be harried an' in- 
sulted by some domineering upstart o' a factor, 
an' then tae spend the money wrung frae the 
land by honest fouks among strangers and 
foreigners ? 

"What ails the landlords that they wunna 
live amang their ain people and oversee their 
ain affairs, so that laird and farmer can male 
their bargain wi' nae time-serving interloper 
atween, an' the puirest cottar on an estate hae 
the richt tae see the man on whose lands he 
lives, as did his fathers before him ? " 

Tlu Days of Atdd Lang Sytie. 

January 18 

CHRIST'S minister must, at the same time, 
remember that he is the representative of 
the Carpenter of Nazareth, Who had a very 
tender compassion for the proletariat, and by 
this Spirit has led them all those years through 
the wilderness to the borders of the Promised 
Land, and that he is the legitimate successor of 
those Hebrew Prophets who were the cham- 
pions of the poor and the uncompromising 
enemies of tyrannical wealth. 

The Cure of Souls. 



January 19 

ANY other man born at the beginning of 
the first century could be dropped into 
his class, but Jesus defied classification. As 
He moved among the synagogues of Galilee, 
He was an endless perplexity. One could 
never anticipate Him. One was in despair to 
explain Him. Whence is He .'' the people 
whispered with a vague sense of the problem, 
for He marked the introduction of a new form 
of life. He was not referable to type : He was 
the beginning of a time, riie Mind of the Master. 



January 20 

HE was a head to every widow, and a father 
to the orphans, and the friend of all 
lowly, discouraged, unsuccessful souls. Ten 
miles away people did not know his name, but 
his own congregation regarded no other, and in 
the Lord's presence, it was well known, it was 
often mentioned 5 when he laid down his trust, 
and arrived on the other side, many whom he 
had fed and guided, and restored and com- 
forted, till he saw them through the gates, 
were waiting to receive their shepherd-minister, 
and as they stood around him before the Lord, 
he, of all men, could say without shame, "Be- 
hold, Lord, Thine under-shepherd, and the 
flock Thou didst give me." xhe Cure 0/ Souls. 



January 21 

ONE may walk in the light and know noth- 
ing of astronomy, as did St. Thomas, 
who was practically a slave of Jesus and doc- 
trinally a sceptic concerning Christ. One may 
have studied astronomy and walk in darkness, 
as did the Pharisees, who were accomplished in 
doctrine and sent Jesus to the Cross. 

The Cure of Souls. 

January 22 

" T~*OR twa hundred years an' mair there's 
-L been a Baxter at Burnbrae and a Hay 
at Kilspindie ; ane wes juist a workin' farmer, 
an' the ither a belted earl, but gude freends an' 
faithfu'; an', ma Lord, Burnbrae wes as dear 
tae oor fouk as the castle wes tae yours. 

" A' mind that day the Viscount cam o' 
age, an' we gaithered tae wush him weel, that 
a' saw the pictures o' the auld Hays on yir 
walls, an' thocht hoo mony were the ties that 
bund ye tae yir hame. 

"We haena pictures nor gowden treasures, 
but there 's an' auld chair at oor fireside, an' a' 
saw ma grandfather in it when a' wes a laddie 
at the schule, an' a' mind him tellin' me that 
his grandfather hed sat in it lang afore. It 's 
no' worth muckle, an' it's been often mended, 
but a '11 no' like tae see it carried oot frae 
Burnbrae. ' ' The Days of Auld Lang Sync. 



January 23 

WITH Jesus the present was ever eclipsed 
by the future, so that while the multi- 
tude would have made Him a King, He saw 
Himself forsaken on a cross 5 and while He 
was about to be cnicified, He was promising to 
return for the judgment of the world. He set 
His face steadfastly, lifted above the ebb and 
flow of circumstances, because the Divine Will 
was ever revealing itself, peak above peak, to 
the ages of ages. The Mind of the Master. 

January 24 

" T T 'S a strange bulk the Bible, and no the 
X bulk we wud hae made, tae judge by 
oor bit creeds and confessions. It's like a 
head o' aits in the harvest time. There 's the 
ear that bauds the grain and keeps it safe, and 
that's the history, and there's often no mickle 
nutriment in It j then there's the corn lying in 
the ear, which is the Evangel frae Eden tae 
Revelation, and that is the bread o' the soul. 
But the corn maun be threshed first and the cauf 
(chaff) cleaned aff. It 's a bonnle sicht tae see 
the pure grain fallin' like a rinnin' burn on the 
corn-room floor, and a glint o' the sun through 
the window turning it intae gold. But the stour 
(dust) o' the cauf room is mair than onybody can 
abide, and the cauf 's worth naethin' when the 
corn 's awa. " Beside tJie Bonnie Brier Bush. 



January 25 

CARMICHAEL'S predecessor was minis- 
ter of the Free Church in those days, 
who afterwards got University preferment — he 
wrote a book on the Greek, particles, much 
tasted in certain circles — and is still called 
"the Professor" in a hushed voice by old 
people. He was so learned a scholar that he 
would go out to visit without his hat, and so 
shy that he could walk to Kildrummie with one 
of his people on the strength of two observa- 
tions, the first at Tochty bridge and the other 
at the crest of the hill above the station. Lach- 
lan himself did not presume at times to under- 
stand his sermons, but the Free Church loved 
their scholar, for they knew the piety and 
courage that dwelt in the man. 

The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 

January 26 

IT is not for him to stir up strife between 
classes, but to make peace, yet if in any 
critical conflict between the poor and the rich 
the minister of Jesus sides with the strongest, 
then hath he broken his commission and for- 
saken his Master. If the Church of the Naza- 
rene lift not up her voice on behalf of those 
who " labour and are heavy laden," and is not a 
refuge for the poor and friendless, what good is 
she on the face of the earth ? The Cure ofSotds. 



January 27 

THERE Is nothing on which we differ so 
hopelessly as creed, nothing on which 
we agree so utterly as character. Impanel 
twelve men of clean conscience and average 
intelligence and ask them to try some person 
by his opinions, and they may as well be dis- 
charged at once : they will not agree till the 
Greek Kalends. Ask them to take the stand- 
ard of conduct, and they will bring in a verdict 
in five minutes. The Mmdofthe Master. 



January 28 

HE is unfortunate whose thoughts are un- 
touched by poetry and unfortified by 
ancient wisdom, over whose study the sky is 
ever grey and dull. An idea may be his, but 
his impression of it will be cold and colourless. 
On the other hand, he must have some reserve 
and self-denial on whose mind the sun beats 
strongly. It is possible to confuse and blot 
out an idea by excess of light, so that amid 
pictures, rivers, pyramids, sunsets, science, 
poetry, history, and drama, the hearer does not 
catch the one message that the preacher had for 
his soul. One blind after another has to be 
pulled down on certain brilliant and opulent 
minds before an idea, however grand and 
august, has Its right place. rhe Cure of Souls. 



January 29 

<< T T TAE'S me, wha will care for her grave 
V V when we 're far awa an' no' a Bax- 
ter left in the Glen?" . . . 

The past with the tender associations that 
make a woman's life was tightening its hold on 
Jean, and when they looked down on the Glen 
from the height of Burnbrae, her voice broke 
again, — 

"It's a bonnle sicht, John, an' kindly tae 
oor eyes ; we '11 never see anither tae sateesfy 
oor auld age." 

"A've seen nae ither a' ma days," said 
Burnbrae, "an' there can be nane sae dear tae 
me noo in this warld ; but it can be boucht 
ower dear, lass," and when she looked at him, 
" wi' oor souls, Jean, wi' oor souls." 

The Days of Atdd Lang Syrte. 

January 30 

SUPPOSE by the insistence of the Church 
it could be brought to pass — which is 
a vain expectation — that every man should, in 
any measurable period of time, be well fed and 
dressed and housed, should be free from disease, 
idleness, weariness, should have equal rights, 
privileges, opportunities with his neighbour, 
then this bread-and-butter paradise were a poor 
exchange for the Eternal Hope. 

The Cure of Souls. 



January 31 

THE footpath from the doctor's to Whinnie 
Knowe passed along the front of the hill 
above the farm of Drumsheugh, and Marget 
came to the cottage where she had lived with 
her mother in the former time. It was empty, 
and she went into the kitchen. How home- 
like it had been in those days, and warm, even 
in winter, for Drumsheugh had made the wright 
board over the roof and put in new windows. 
Her mother was never weary speaking of his 
kindness, yet they were only working people. 
The snow had drifted down the wide chimney 
and lay in a heap on the hearth, and Marget 
shivered. The sorrow of life came upon her 
— the mother and the son now lying in the 
kirkyard. Then the blood rushed to her heart 
again, for love endures and triumphs. But 
sorrow without love . . . her thoughts returned 
to Drumsheugh, whose hearth-stone was cold 
indeed. She was now looking down on his 
home, set in the midst of the snow. Its cheer- 
lessness appealed to her — the grey, sombre 
house where this man, with his wealth of love, 
lived alone. 

Tlie Days of Auld Lavg Syne. 




WITH the first plunge into the bed of the 
stream the water rose to the axles, and 
then it crept up to the shafts, so that the sur- 
geon could feel it lapping in about his feet, 
while the dogcart began to quiver, and it seemed 
as if it were to be carried away. Sir George 
was as brave as most men, but he had never 
forded a Highland river in flood, and the mass 
of black, water racing past beneath, before, be- 
hind him, affected his imagination and shook 
his nerves. He rose from his seat and ordered 
MacLure to turn back, declaring that he would 
be condemned utterly and eternally if he allowed 
himself to be drowned for any person. 

"Sit doon," thundered MacLure; "con- 
demned ye will be suner or later gin ye shirk 
yir duty, but through the water ye gang the 
day." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



January 31 

THE footpath from the doctor's to Whinnie 
Knowe passed along the front of the hill 
above the farm of Drumsheiigh, and Marget 
came to the cottage where she had lived with 
her mother in the former time. It was empty, 
and she went Into the kitchen. How home- 
like it had been in those days, and warm, even 
in winter, for Drumsheugh had made the wright 
board over the roof and put in new windows. 
Her mother was never weary speaking of his 
kindness, yet they were only working people. 
The snow had drifted down the wide chimney 
and lay in a heap on the hearth, and Marget 
shivered. The sorrow of life came upon her 
— the mother and the son now lying in the 
kirkyard. Then the blood rushed to her heart 
again, for love endures and triumphs. But 
sorrow without love . . . her thoughts returned 
to Drumsheugh, whose hearth-stone was cold 
indeed. She was now looking down on his 
home, set in the midst of the snow. Its cheer- 
lessness appealed to her — the grey, sombre 
house where this man, with his wealth of love, 
lived alone. 

Ttie Days of A uld Lang- Syne. 




WITH the first plunge into the bed of the 
stream the water rose to the axles, and 
then it crept up to the shafts, so that the sur- 
geon could feel it lapping in about his feet, 
while the dogcart began to quiver, and it seemed 
as if it were to be carried away. Sir George 
was as brave as most men, but he had never 
forded a Highland river in flood, and the mass 
of black water racing past beneath, before, be- 
hind him, affected his imagination and shook 
his nerves. He rose from his seat and ordered 
MacLure to turn back, declaring that he would 
be condemned utterly and eternally if he allowed 
himself to be drowned for any person. 

"Sit doon," thundered MacLure 5 "con- 
demned ye will be suner or later gin ye shirk 
yir duty, but through the water ye gang the 
day." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



February i 

" T) UT ye cudna ca' Burnbrae a shairp busi- 

J-J ness man," said Jamie Soutar critically ; 
" he keepit Jess Stewart daein' naething for five 
year, and gared her believe she wes that usefif 
he cudna want her, because Jess wud suner hae 
dee'd than gaen on the pairish. 

" As for puir fouk, he wes clean redeeklus 5 
there wesna a weedow in the Glen didna get her 
seed frae him in a bad year. He hed abeelity 
in gaitherin', but he wes wastfu' in spendin'. 

" Hooever, he's gane noo, an' we maunna 
be sayin' ill o' the deed ; it 's no' what he wud 
hae dune himsel' . Whatna day ' s the beerial ? ' ' 
inquired Jamie anxiously. 

"Beerial ? Losh preserve 's, Jamie," began 
Hillocks, but Drumsheugh understood. 

The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 

February i 

I'^HE trend of the graver intelligence among 
the public is evident, and it is distinctly 
towards those great questions which form the 
substance of the Christian faith, and lie at the 
foiuidation of religion. People will lie be- 
calmed in morals, and even in physical science, 
weary unto death, but if any one dares to deal 
with questions of faith after an understanding 
fashion, he has the wind with him. 

The Cure of Souls. 



February 3 

WOMEN noticed that Carmichael bore him- 
self to them as if each were a Madonna, 
and treated him in turn according to their nature. 
Some were abashed, and could not understand 
the lad's shyness ; those were saints. Some were 
amused, and suspected him of sarcasm ; those 
were less than saints. Some horrified him unto 
confusion of face because of the shameful things 
they said. One middle-aged female, whose 
conversation oscillated between physiology and 
rescue work, compelled Carmichael to sue for 
mercy on the ground that he had not been accus- 
tomed to speak about such details of lite with a 
woman, and ever afterwards described him as a 
prude. It seemed to Carmichael that he was 
disliked by some women because he thought 
more highly of them than they thought of 
themselves. ^ate Carfiegie. 



February 4 

AN audience creates an atmosphere which, 
after a little experience, one can feel with 
such accuracy that he knows when they are with 
him or against him. Audience and speaker act 
and react on one another, so that a supercilious 
and frigid people can chill the most fiery soul, 
while a hundred warm-hearted folk can make 
a plain man eloquent. xhe Cure of Souls. 



February 5 

SABBATH or no Sabbath, the Glen cannot 
let him pass without some tribute of their 
pride. 

Jess has recognised friends, and the doctor is 
drawing rein. 

"It hes tae be dune," said Jamie, desper- 
ately, "say what ye like." Then they all 
looked towards him, and Jamie led. 

"Hurrah," swinging his Sabbath hat in the 
air, "hurrah," and once more, "hurrah." 
. . . As they passed the corner of the kirk- 
yard, a figure waved his college cap over the 
wall and gave a cheer on his own account. 

"God bless you, doctor, and well done." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Biish. 

February 6 

"nr^HEY'VE heard about Saunders, a'm 
X. thinkin', wumman, and they 're pleased 
we brocht him roond ; he 's fairly on the mend, 
ye ken, noo. 

"A' never expeckit the like o' this, though, 
and it wes juist a wee thingie mair than a' cud 
hae stude. 

" Ye hev yir share in 't tae, lass ; we 've hed 
mony a hard nicht and day theglther, an' yon 
wes oor reward. No mony men in this warld 
'ill ever get a better, for it cam frae the hert o' 
honest fouk. ' ' Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



February" 7 

JESUS reigns supreme among teachers not 
only by the perfection of His character but 
also by the grandeur of His subject. A prophet 
has many things to say to his generation 5 one 
only is his message. Jesus treated every idea 
of the first order in the sphere of Religion ; His 
burden was Life. He did not set Himself to 
teach men how to organise the state, nor how 
to analyse their minds, nor how to discharge 
elementary duties, nor how to form a science 
of Theology. This was not because Jesus 
despised these departments, it was because He 
proposed to dominate them. He would not 
localise Himself in one because He would in- 
spire all. Behind the state is the individual, 
behind the individual is the soul, and the one 
question of the soul is life. 

Tlie Mind qftJie Master. 



February 8 

THERE are minds so comprehensive and 
agile that they can play with half a dozen 
ideas in one sermon and delight an audience — 
making one idea illuminate another, and using 
the combined force of opposite ideas to produce 
the desired effect ; but for the average man 
with whom we are concerned the handling of 
one is a sufficient strain. y/j^ Cure 0/ Souls. 



February 9 

THE young minister was stirred on the way 
to Kilbogie, and began to dream dreams 
in the twilight. Love had come suddenly to 
him, and after an unexpected fashion. Miss 
Carnegie was of another rank and another faith, 
nor was she even his ideal woman, neither con- 
spicuously spiritual nor gentle, but frank, out- 
spoken, fearless, self-willed. He could also 
see that she had been spoiled by her father and 
his friends, who had given her carte blanche 
to say and do what she pleased. Very likely 
— he could admit that even in the first blush 
of his emotion — she might be passionate and 
prejudiced on occasion, even a fierce hater. 

Kate Carnegie. 



February 10 

ST. THERESA had been the woman en- 
shrined in the tabernacle of his heart, but 
life might have been a trifle tiresome if a man 
were married to a saint. The saints have no 
humour, and do not relax. Life with a woman 
like Miss Carnegie would be effervescent and 
stimulating, full of surprises and piquancy. 
No, she was not a saint, but he felt by an in- 
stinct she was pure, loyal, reverent, and true at 
the core. She was a gallant lass, and ... he 
loved her. j^^f, Carnegw. 



February 1 1 

"TT'S no' Milton's preachin' Drumtochty 
JL disna like, but his leein', an' that Drum- 
tochty canna abide. Nae man," summed up 
Drumsheugh, " hes ony richt tae speak, aboot 
releegion ye canna trust in the market." 

So it came to pass that Mihon counted Drum- 
tochty as an outcast place, because they did not 
speak about the affairs of the life to come, and 
Drumtochty would liave nothing to do with Mil- 
ton, because he was not straight in the affairs of 
the life which now is . n.^ jj^y, ^j-^ uldLang Syne. 

February 12 

DRUMTOCHTY was amazed at her self- 
will, and declared by tlie mouth of Kirsty 
Stewart that Carmichael's aunt had flown in the 
face of Providence. Below her gentle simplicity 
she was, however, a shrewd woman, and was 
quite determined that her nephew should not be 
handed over to the tender mercies of a clerical 
housekeeper, who is said to be a heavier yoke 
than the Confession of Faith, for there be clever 
ways of escape from confessions, but none from 
Margaret Meiklewham ; and while all the 
churches are busy every year in explaining that 
their Articles do not mean what they say. Miss 
Meiklewham had a snort which was beyond 
all she said, and that was not by any means 
restricted. j^aie Carnegie. 



February 13 

ART, with an unerring instinct of moral 
beauty, has seized the Cross and idealised 
it. It is wrought in gold and hung from the 
neck of light-hearted beauty ; it is stamped on 
the costly binding of Bibles that go to church 
in carriages ; it stands out in bold relief on 
churches that are filled with easy-going people. 
Painters have given themselves to crucifixions, 
and their striking works are criticised by per- 
sons who praise the thorns in the crown, but 
are not quite pleased with the expression on 
Jesus'" face, and then return to their pleasures. 
Composers have cast the bitter Passion of Jesus 
into stately oratorios, and fashionable audiences 
are affected unto tears. j-he Mind of the Master. 

February 14 

WHAT we want to-day is not organisers, 
but preachers ; and every hindrance 
ouglit to be removed, that a man who can preach 
may have an opportunity of fulfilling his high 
calling. One Minister laboured for three years 
night and day, and when His ministry was sud- 
denly closed He had only a roomful of people. 
But one man was St. John and one woman 
was St. Mary Magdalene. A single Raphael 
counts more than hundreds of clever impres- 
sionist sketches. One saintly soul reared by a 
patient ministry will weigh down in the scales 
mobs of hearers. The Cure 0/ Souls. 



February 15 

THEY are unworthy of their profession who 
join in the Philistine outcry against theol- 
ogy, and allow it to be spoken of as sometiiing 
not worthy of serious study. If it be praise- 
worthy to classify beetles, and specialists among 
the coleoptera speak solemnly of their subject, 
it may be allowed for one science to reason 
regarding God and the soul. y;^ Cure ofSouh. 

February 16 

HIS coat he flung east and his waistcoat west, 
as far as he could hurl them, and it was 
plain he would have shouted had he been a com- 
plete mile from Saunders' room. Any less dis- 
tance was useless for adequate expression. He 
struck Dnunsheugh a mighty blow that well-nigh 
levelled that substantial man in the dust, and then 
the doctor of Drumtochty issued his bulletin. 

" Saunders wesna tae live through the nicht, 
but he 's livin' this meenut, an' like to live. 

"He's got by the warst clean and fair, and 
wi' him that's as good as cure. 

" It'ill beagraund waukenin' for Bell; she 'ill 
no be a weedow yet, nor the bairnies fatherless. 

"There's nae use glowerin' at me, Drum- 
sheugh, for a body 's daft at a time, an' a' canna 
contain masel, and a'm no gaein' tae try." 

Then it dawned upon Drumsheugh that the 
doctor was attempting the Highland fling. 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Biish- 



February 17 

SPIRITUAL Life is not a series of isolated 
springs, but an ocean laving every shore. 
It is one, and has its source in God ; as Truth 
and Righteousness and Love are one, and stand 
in God. When one thinks of Life in man as one 
thing, and Life in God as another, he has lost the 
key to the science of Life. Nothing deserves 
the name of Life in us that cannot be affirmed of 
God. Life in the soul is the tide of the Divine 
ocean flowing as it has opportunity through the 
narrow channels of human nature. Everything 
else is only a colourable imitation of Life, and a 
modeof existence. Life is in its origin Heavenly, 
and cometh down. riie MhidoftJie Master. 

February 18 

THIS is the final test of all societies In the 
machinery of the congregation — do they 
help or weaken the Church ? Are they branches 
springing out of the trunk and gathering into 
their leaves the air and light of heaven — a 
beauty and strength ? Then let them be fos- 
tered. Or are they suckers drawing away so 
much of the sap from the tree itself? a luxu- 
riant, unprofitable, mutinous undergrowth — 
then let them be cut down and done away with, 
for they are in any case only human inventions, 
but the Church is of Christ and the home of 
the soul. The Cure of Souh. 



February 19 

'< TT iss in the dark that Flora will be com- 
JL ing, and she must know that her father 
Iss waiting for her." 

He cleaned and trimmed with anxious hand 
a lamp that was kept for show, and had never 
been used. Then he selected from his books 
Edwards' " Sinners in the Hands of an angry 
God," and " Coles on the Divine Sovereignty," 
and on them he laid the large family Bible out 
of which Flora's name had been blotted. This 
was the stand on which he set the lamp in the 
window, and every night till Flora returned its 
light shone down the steep path that ascended 
to her home, like the Divine Love from the 
open door of our Father's House. 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 

February 20 

JESUS laid Himself alongside sinful people, 
and out of them He slowly built up the 
new kingdom. If a man was a formalist, he 
must be born again ; if the slave of riches, he 
must sell all he had ; if in the toils of a darling 
sin, he must pluck out his right eye to enter 
the kingdom of God. New men to make a 
new state. The kingdom was humility, pur- 
ity, generosity, unselfishness. It was the reign 
of character ; it was the struggle for perfection. 
The Mind oftJie Master. 



February 21 

BURNBRAE and Jean saw all their gear, 
save the household furniture, set out for 
sale. She had resolved to be brave for his 
sake, but every object in the field made its own 
appeal to her heart. What one read in the 
auctioneer's catalogue was a bare list of ani- 
mals and implements, the scanty plenishing of 
a Highland farm. Jean saw everything in a 
golden mist of love. It was a perfectly pre- 
posterous old dog-cart, that ought to have been 
broken up long ago, but how often she had 
gone in it to Muirtown on market days with 
John ! and on the last journey he had wrapped 
her up as tenderly as when she was a young 
bride. -j-he Days of A uld Lang Syne. 

February 11 

WHEN tides meet there is broken water, 
and many are tossed in their minds as to 
whether the pulpit ought to give its strength to 
the regeneration of the individual or of society. 
Certainly it were a departure from the method 
of our Lord to ignore the soul, with its awful 
responsibilities and immense possibilities, to 
starve the inner life, which is the spring of 
all good thinking and working, to be silent 
regarding the things unseen and eternal. 

TJie Cure of Souls. 



February 23 

WHILE piety imagined God as the Father 
of a few and the Judge of the rest, human- 
ity was belittled and Pharisaism reigned 5 slavery 
was defended from the Bible, and missions were 
counted an impertinence. When He is recog- 
nised as the universal Father, and the outcasts of 
Humanity as His prodigal children, every effort 
of love will be stimulated, and the Kingdom of 
God will advance by leaps and bounds. As this 
sublime truth is believed, national animosities, 
social divisions, religious hatreds and inhuman 
doctrines will disappear. No class will regard 
itself as favoured : no class will feel itself rejected, 
for all men everywhere will be embraced in the 
mission of Jesus and the love of the Father. 

Tlie Mind of the Master. 

February 24 

" TV /r AISTER Gordon," said Marget, "this 
IVX is George's Homer, and he bade me tell 
you that he coonted yirfreendship ain o' the gifts 
o' God." For a brief space Gordon was silent, 
and, when he spoke, his voice sounded strange 
in that room. 

" Your son was the finest scholar of my time, 
and a very perfect gentleman. He was also my 
tnie friend, and I pray God to console liis 
mother." And Ludovic Gordon bowed low 
over Marget' s worn hand as if she had been 
a queen. Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



February 25 

IT lies upon the minister of Christ to care for 
the souls of his people from house to house ; 
to spare no pains that divine service be beautiful 
and reverent 5 to afford to the young every useful 
means of religious culture,- to move his congre- 
gation unto such good works as lie to their hand ; 
but it is well for him to remember that the most 
critical and influential event in the religious 
week is the sermon. History bears unanimous 
testimony on this point. fh^ Cureo/SouU. 

February 26 

IT is a person, not a dogma, which invites my 
faith ; a person, not a code, which asks for 
obedience. Jesus stands in the way of every 
selfishness ; He leads in the path of every sac- 
rifice ; He is crucified in every act of sin ; He is 
glorified in every act of holiness. St. Stephen, as 
he suffered for the Gospel, saw the heavens open 
and Jesus standing to receive him. St. Peter, 
fleeing in a second panic from Rome, meets Jesus 
returning to be crucified in his place. Con- 
science and heart are settled on Jesus, and one 
feels within his soul the tides of His virtue. It 
is not the doctrines nor the ethics of Christianity 
that are its irresistible attraction. Its doctrines 
have often been a stumbling-block, and its eth- 
ics excel only in degree. The life-blood of 
Christianity is Christ. The Mind of the Master. 



February 27 

CERTAIN preachers enrich their sermons 
with quotations, and a stately line has 
often fitly crowned an argument. But this 
habit calls for delicacy and reticence. When 
a sentence of some loved writer occurs to one 
as he is thinking out his discourse, and he uses 
it as the expression of his own mind, then it 
becomes a part of the pattern, and is more than 
justified. When he stops at intervals, and goes 
in search of such passages, the quotation is then 
foreign to his thinking, it is a tag of embroidery 
stitched on the garment. 

The Cure of Souls. 



February 28 

WHEN one says, "Lord, I believe," in 
Jesus' sense, he means that he trusts — a 
very different thing. Jesus' physical Resurrec- 
tion, in the same way, is a question that can 
only be decided by evidence, and is within the 
province of reason. His spiritual Resurrection 
is a drama of the soul, and a matter of faith. 
When I declare my belief that on the third day 
Jesus rose, I am really yielding to evidence. 
When I am crucified with Christ, buried with 
Christ, and rise to newness of life in Christ, I 
am believing after the very sense of Jesus. 

The Mind of tlie Master. 



February 29 

" \ /"E ken verra weel ■" — for Milton believed 

X Jamie a kindred spirit at this stage — 
"that we 're a' here on proljation, and that few 
are chosen — juist a handfu' here an' there ; no' 
on accoont o' ony excellence in oorsel's, so we 
niaunna boast." 

"Verra comfortin' for the handfu'," mur- 
mured Jamie, his eyes fixed on the roof. 

"Weel, gin yon young man didna declare 
in sae mony words that we were a' God's 
bairns, an' that He wes gaeiu' tae dae the best 
He cud wi' every ane o 's. What think ye o' 
that? — nae difference atween the elect an' the 
ithers, nae preeveleges nor advantages! It's 
against balth Scriptur an' reason." 

" He wes maybe mixin' up the Almichty wi' 
his ain faither," suggested Jamie. " A 've 
heard ignorant fouk say that a' the differ is that 
the Almichty is nae waur than oor ain faither, 
but oot o' a' sicht kinder. But whar wud ye 
be gin ye allooed the like o' that ? — half o' the 
doctrines wud hae tae be reformed," and Jamie 
departed, full of condolence with Milton. 

It was not wonderful after these trying ex- 
periences that Milton became a separatist, and 
edified himself and his household in his kitchen. 
Tlie Days of Aiild Latig Syne. 




"TTE'S a skilly man, Doctor MacLure," 
1. JL continued my friend Mrs. Macfadyen, 
whose judgment on sermons or anything else 
was seldom at fault ; " an' a kind-hearted, 
though o' coorse he hes his faults like us a', 
an' he disna tribble the Kirk often. 

** He aye can tell what 's wrang wi' a body, 
an' maistly he can put ye richt, an' there's nae 
newfangled wys wi' him : a blister for the oot- 
side an' Epsom salts for the inside dis his wark, 
an' they say there's no an herb on the hills he 
disna ken. 

"If we're tae dee, we're tae dee; an' if 
we're tae live, we 're tae live," concluded Els- 
peth, with sound Calvinistic logic; "but a 'II 
say this for the doctor, that whether yir tae live 
or dee, he can aye keep up a shairp meisture on 
the skin." 

Beside the Bojitiie Brier Bush. 



March i 

As we grow older and see more of life, it 
seems easier to put a man out of conceit 
with his sin by showing him the winsome and 
perfect form of goodness. So full of surprises 
is human nature that he will loathe himself and 
be drawn to the preacher, and, best of all, love 
righteousness. He that scolds in the pulpit, 
or rails, only irritates ; he that appreciates and 
persuades wins the day. riie Cure of Souls. 



March 2 

NOT only has the best theology been fed by 
this spirit (so that Bonaventura, ques- 
tioned regarding his learning, pointed to the 
crucifix), and the living hymnology been its in- 
carnation (so that to remove the name of Jesus 
were to leave no fragrance) ; but all the vast 
and varied philanthropy of public Christianity 
and the sweet and winsome graces of private life 
have been the fruit of this unworldly emotion. 
"For my sake" has opened a new spring of con- 
duct, from which has flowed the heroism and 
saintliness of nineteen centuries. When Jesus 
founded His religion on personal attachment, 
it seemed a fond imagination : the perennial 
vitality of Christianity has been His vindication. 
The Mmd of the Master. 



March 3 

" T T 'S a sliairp trial, wife, an' hard tae bear. 

X. But dinna forget oor mercies. We hae 
oor fower laddies left us, an' a' daein' weel. 

"We oucht tae be thankfu' that Sandie 's 
been kept in the battle. Think o' yir son win- 
nin' the Victoria Cross, wumman, an' ye '11 see 
it on his breist. 

"An' oor lassie 's safe, Jean . . . in the Auld 
Hame, an' . . . we'll sune be gaein' oorsel's 
an' . . . the '11 be nae pairtin' there. 

" Ye hae me, Jean, an' a' hae ma ain gude- 
wife, an' love is mair than a' the things a man 
can see wi' his een or baud in his hands. Sae 
dinna be cast doon, lass, for nae hand can touch 
oor treasures or tak awa oor love." 

T/te Days of A uld Lang Syne. 



March 4 

IT is right to say that the Church must labour 
to bring heaven here, but this heaven is long 
of coming, and meanwhile the Church must 
comfort the oppressed, the suffering, the beaten 
in this present battle, with the vision of the City 
of Rest, where is no more pain, neither crying, 
for the former things have passed away. A 
policy of sanitation is excellent, but it cannot 
replace the Way of Salvation. 

The Cure of Sends. 



March 5 

AN extremely clever woman disappeared into 
Asia and returned with another religion, 
which has distinctly added to the innocent gaiety 
of the English nation. One never knows when 
a new religion may not be advertised. Various 
interesting societies are understood to be work- 
ing at something, and each novelty receives a 
good-natured welcome. No person with any 
sense of humour resents one ot these efforts to 
stimulate the jaded palate of society, unless it 
be paraded a season too long and threatens to 
become a bore. Criticism would be absurd : 
you might as well analyse Alice in Wonderland. 
Comparison with Christianity is impossible : it 
were an insult to Jesus. rite Mind oftJie Master. 

March 6 

" A ' GAED up tae the Manse last nicht, and 
l\. telt the minister hoo the doctor focht 
aucht oors for Saunders' life, an' won, and ye 
never saw a man sae carried. He walkit up 
and doon the room a' the time, and every other 
meenut he blew his nose like a trumpet. 

" 'I've a cold in my head to-night, Drum- 
sheugh,' says he ; ' never mind me.' " 

" A 've hed the same masel in sic circum- 
stances ; they come on sudden," said Jamie. 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



March 7 

'E are now in the school of St. John, and 
. . are beginning to discover that none can 
be a heretic who loves, nor any one be other 
than a schismatic who does not love. None 
can be cast out of" God's kingdom if he loves, 
none received into it if he does not love. Usher 
cannot excommimicate Riitherfurd because he 
was not ordained by a Bishop, nor Rutherfurd 
condemn Usher because he was a head and front 
of Prelacy. Channing cannot exclude Faber 
because he believes too much, or Faber exclude 
Channing because he believes too little. None 
can read Jesus' exposition of Love and imagine 
such moral disorder. The Mi7id of the Master. 

March 8 

SCIENCE has, for its field, everything 
material ; religion, everything spiritual. 
When the scientist comes, as he constantly does, 
on something beyond his tests, as, for instance, 
life, he ought to leave it to Religion. When 
the saint comes on something material, as, for 
instance, creation, he ought to leave it to Science. 
Faith has no apparatus for science 5 science has 
no method of discovering God. For the phe- 
nomena of the universe we look to Science ; for 
the facts of the soul to Faith. 

The Mind of the Master. 



March 9 

CONCEIVE it that a man should receive 
infants in the name of Christ, should dis- 
pense the Sacrament of the Lord's death, should 
minister by the bedside of the dying, should be 
witness of the supreme conflicts of the soul, 
should carry the message of the Divine Love, 
should intercede for the people with God, should 
live and work amid sacred mysteries, — and 
should have lost all sense of their awtulness, 
their loveliness, their tenderness. 

The Ctire of Souls. 

March 10 

IT must be remembered that when Jesus had 
said His last word on earth and ascended 
unto the Father, it was not to cease from teach- 
ing any more than from working. He was 
only to depart in the flesh, having given the let- 
ter, that He might return by the Holy Ghost 
to open up the spirit. Like a father He placed 
in the hands of His children the sum of all His 
wisdom, not expecting them at once to under- 
stand it, but charging them to study it, in the 
good hope that one day they would enter into 
its fulness. The Church has been the child, 
and the long history of doctrine and morals has 
been the attempt to possess Jesus' words, while 
all the time He Himself was the Saviour of every 
one that trusted in Him. r/ie Mi7idofthe Master. 



March 1 1 

HOLINESS compels awe, wisdom compels 
respect ; they do not allure. Nothing 
can create Life but Life ; nothing can beget 
Love but Love. He that is not loved hates; 
he that is loved, loves, is a law of experience. 
As the earth gives out the heat which it has re- 
ceived from the sun, so the devotion of Jesus' 
disciples to Him in all ages has been the return 
of His immense devotion to them. He lavished 
on His first disciples a wealth of love in His 
friendship ; He sealed it with His sacrifice of 
Himself upon the cross. 

The Mind of the Master. 

'^ 

March \i 

HIS people are ever in the pastor's heart, 
although this may not appear in his ordi- 
nary manner. He claims identity with them in 
their joy and sorrow and endless vicissitudes of 
life. No friend is blessed with any good gift of 
God but he is also richer. No household suf- 
fers loss but he is poorer. If one stand amid 
great temptation he is stronger ; if one fall he is 
weaker. When any one shows conspicuous 
grace the pastor thanks God as for himself; 
when any one refuses His call he is dismayed, 
counting himself less faithful. 

The Cure of Souls. 



March 13 

No power in human experience has wrought 
such mighty works as the spoken word : 
it has beaten down impiety, taught righteous- 
ness, given freedom to the oppressed, and created 
nations. Before Knox, armed with this sword 
of God, hosts fled, and he reigned in the pulpit 
of St. Giles as a king upon his throne : and if 
you go into the roots of things, was not the 
American nation founded on brave, wholesome 
speech .? The Cure of Souls. 

March 14 

WHEN the sashes are flying away from the 
windows and the skirting boards from 
the floor, and the planks below your feet are a 
finger-breadth apart, and the pipes are death- 
traps, it does not matter that the walls are cov- 
ered by art papers and plastered over with china 
dishes. This erection, wherein human beings 
have to live and work and fight their sins and 
prepare for eternity, is a fraud and a lie. No 
man compelled to exist in such an environment 
of unreality can respect himself or other people ; 
and if it come to pass that he holds cheap views 
of life, and reads smart papers, and does sharp 
things in business, and that his talk be only a 
clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be 
lodged for him at the Great Assize. 

Kate Carnegie. 



March 15 

WHEN Jesus came from the Father, the 
religious instincts were withering in the 
dust, and vainly feeling for something on which 
they could climb to God ; Jesus presented Him- 
self, and gathered the tendrils of the soul round 
His Person. He found religion a rite ; He left 
It a passion. The Mind of the Master. 

March 16 

THE final test of any religion is its inherent 
spiritual dynamic : the force of Christian- 
ity is the pledge of its success. It is not a school 
of morals, nor a system of speculation, it is an 
enthusiasm. This religion is Spring in the 
spiritual world, with the irresistible charm of the 
quickening wind and the bursting bud. It is a 
birth, as Jesus would say, a breath of God that 
makes all things new. Humanity does not need 
morals, it needs motives : it is sick of specula- 
tion, it longs for action. Men see their duty 
in every land and age with exasperating clear- 
ness. We know not how to do it. No one 
condemns the good, he leaves it undone. No 
one approves the evil, he simply does it. Our 
moral machinery is complete but motionless. 
The religion which inspires men with a genuine 
passion for holiness and a constraining motive 
of service will last. It has solved the problem 
of spiritual motion. T/,e Mind of the Master. 



March 17 

WE must accept the age into which Provi- 
dence has cast us, and enter into its 
spirit. One can hardly imagine any more hon- 
ourable task than to meet its wants and to guide 
its inquiries. There are ages which have been 
saved from sin by evangelism; this is an age 
which must be saved from scepticism by knowl- 
edge. 

The Cure of Soitls. 



March 18 

EVERY Sabbath a company of the Auld 
Kirk going west met a company of the 
Frees going east, and nothing passed except a 
nod or " A wee saft," in the case of drenching 
rain, not through any want of neighbourliness, 
but because this was the nature God had been 
pleased to give Drumtoclity. 

For the first time, the Auld Kirk insisted on 
a halt and conversation. It did not sound much, 
being mainly a comparison of crops among the 
men, and a brief review of the butter market 
by the women — Jamie Soutar only going the 
length of saying that he was coming next Sab- 
bath to hear the last of Cunningham's "course" 
— but it was understood to be a demonstration, 
and had its due effect. 

Tlie Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



March 19 

WHEN the Roman Empire was laid waste, 
and the world seemed to be falling to 
pieces, St. Augustine described the new empire 
that should rise on the ashes of the old. The 
City of God stands first among his writings, and 
created the Holy Roman Empire, but the Papacy 
has not redeemed humanity. When the life of 
Florence was eaten out by the Medicis, Savona- 
rola purified the city tor a space with a thunder- 
storm. The Florentines cast out their Herods 
at the bidding of their Baptist, they burned their 
vanities in the market-place, they elected Jesus 
King of Florence by acclamation. In a little 
they brought Herod back, and burned the Baptist 
in the same market-place. 

The Mind oftlu Master. 



March 20 

THE Puritans were at first quiet, serious, 
peaceable men who were outraged by the 
reign of unrighteousness, and drew the sword to 
deliver England. They made the host of God 
triumphant for a little. Then came the reac- 
tion, and iniquity covered the land as with a 
flood. It was high failure, but it was failure. 
It does not become us to criticise those forlorn 
hopes ; we ought to learn from their reverses. 
The IMind o/the Master. 



March 21 

THE preacher has admiration for his peculiar 
reward, but the pastor has affection : if 
the preacher be ill there are paragraphs in the 
newspapers 5 if the pastor, there is concern in 
humble homes. No man in human society 
gathers such a harvest of kindly feeling as the 
shepherd of souls, none is held in such grateful 
memory. The Cure 0/ Souls. 

March 11 

WHEN at last the doctor rose to go, in spite 
of Jean's last remonstrance that he had 
eaten nothing, Burnbrae said he would like the 
ministers to take the reading that night, and then 
they all went into the kitchen, which had been 
made ready. A long table stood in the centre, 
and at one end lay the old family Bible ; round 
the table gathered Burnbrae' s sons and the 
serving lads and women. Doctor Davidson 
motioned to the Free Church minister to take 
his place at the head. 

"This is your family, and your elder's 
house." 

But Cunningham spoke out instantly with a 
clear voice — 

" Doctor Davidson, there is neither Estab- 
lished nor Free Church here this night ; we are 
all one in faith and love, and you were ordained 
before I was born." The Days of A jdd Lang: Syne. 



March 23 

THE Sermon on the Mount is the measure of 
Jesus' optuiiism, and its gradual fulfil- 
ment His justification. His ideas have matured 
in the human consciousness, and are now burst- 
ing into flower before our eyes. Thoughtful 
men of many schools are giving their mind to 
the programme of Jesus, and asking whether it 
ought not to be attempted. The ideal of Life, 
one dares now to hope, is to be realised within 
measurable distance, and the dreams of the Gali- 
lean Prophet become history. 

The Mitid 0/ i/ie Master. 

March 24 

MY thoughts drift to the auld schule-house 
and Domsie. Some one with the love 
of God in his heart had built it long ago, and 
chose a site for the bairns in the sweet pine- 
woods at the foot of the cart road to Whinnie 
Knowe and the upland farms. It stood in a 
clearing with the tall Scotch firs round three 
sides, and on the fourth a brake of gorse and 
bramble bushes, through which there was an 
opening to the road. The clearing was the 
playground, and in summer the bairns annexed 
as much wood as they liked, playing tig among 
the trees, or sitting down at dinner-time on the 
soft, dry spines that made an elastic carpet 
everywhere. Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



March 25 

I^HE preacher also addresses a jury of say- 
five hundred people, and whether his sub- 
ject be sin or righteousness, doctrine or duty, he 
has to bring them to his way of thinking, and 
persuade them to believe his message. If he 
talks above their heads, or delivers himself of 
dead information, or airs his own conceits, or 
raises vain questions, or bores them with obsolete 
doctrines, then he misses his chance, and in spite 
of his learning or acuteness or piety he is a failure. 

Tlie Cure of Souls. 

March 26 

So we imagined an outer court of the religious 
life where most of us made our home, and 
a secret place where only God's nearest friends 
could enter, and it was said of Burnbrae, " He 's 
far ben." His neighbours had watched him, 
for a generation and more, buying and selling, 
ploughing and reaping, going out and in the com- 
mon ways of a farmer's life, and had not missed 
the glory of the soul. The cynic of Drumtochty 
summed up his character: "There's a puckle 
gude fouk in the pairish, and ane or twa o' the 
ither kind, and the maist o' us are half and be- 
tween," said Jamie Soutar, "but there's ae 
thing ye may be sure o', Burnbrae is 'far ben.'" 
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



March 27 

"' I ""HIS letter 'ill gie ye a sair hert for mony a 
X day, but ye '11 coont the sairness a bless- 
ing an' no' an ill. Never lat it slip frae yir mind 
that twa true weemen loved ye an' prayed for ye 
till the laist, deein' wi' yir name on their lips. 
Ye '11 be a man yet, Chairlie. 

< ' Dinna answer this letter — answer yon fond 
herts that love an' pray for ye. Gin ye be ever 
in tribble, lat me ken. A' wes yir grand- 
mither's freend and Lily's freend 5 sae lang as 
a 'm here, coont me yir freend for their sake. 
"James Soutar." 

The Days 0/ Auld Lang Syne. 

March 28 

KATE was a lovable lass, but, like every 
complete woman, she had a temper and 
a stock of prejudices. She was good comrade 
with all true men, although her heart was whole, 
and with a few women that did not mince their 
words or carry two faces ; but Kate had claws 
inside the velvet, and once she so handled with 
her tongue a young fellow who offended her 
that he sent in his papers. What she said was 
not much, but it was memorable, and every 
word drew blood. Her father was never quite 
certain what slie would do, although he was 
always sure of her love. /CaU Carnegie. 



March 29 

WHAT rends society in every land is the 
conflict between the rights of tlie one 
and the rights of the many, and harmony can 
only be established by their reconciliation. 
Peace can never be made by the suppression of 
the individual — which is collectivism, nor by 
the endless sacrifice of a hundred for the profit 
of one — which is individualism. Jesus came 
to bring each man's individuality to perfection, 
not to sink him in the mass. Jesus came to 
rescue the poor and weak from the tyranny of 
power and ambition, not to leave them in bond- 
age. Both ends were His, and both are em- 
braced in His new commandment. For the 
ideal placed before each individual is not rule 
but service, and in proportion to his attainments 
will be his sacrifices. The Mmdofthe Master. 

1^ 

March 30 

UNFORTUNATELY for us, at the close 
of the nineteenth century, with its com- 
petition, sensationalism, externalism, and end- 
less bustle, meditation is a lost art, like the 
making of Venetian glass and certain painters' 
pigments. It is not reading, nor thinking, nor 
praying ; it is brooding, a spiritual experience, 
where the subject is hidden in the soul as leaven 
in three measures of meal till all be leavened. 

The Cure of Souls. 



March 31 

""\ ZE maunna be cast doon, Jean," and his 
X voice was very tender, "an' a' ken 
weel ye Ml no be angry wi' me." 

" Angry ? " said Jean ; " ma hert failed last 
nicht for a whilie, but that's ower noo an' for 
ever. John, a' lovit ye frae the time we sat in 
the schule thegither, an' a' wes a happy wum- 
man when ye mairried me. 

" A 've been lifted mony a time when a' saw 
hoc fouk respeckit ye, and abune a' when ye 
gaed doon the kirk wi' the cups in yir hands at 
the Saicrament, for a' kent ye were worthy. 

"Ye 're dearer tae me ilka year that comes 
and gaes, but a' never lovit ye as a' dae this 
nicht, an' a' coont sic a husband better than 
onything God cud gie me on earth." 

And then Jean did what was a strange thing 
in Drumtochty — she flung her arms round 
Burnbrae's neck and kissed him. 

TJie Days of Anld Lang Syne. 




IT was a fine April morning when the news 
of the great disaster came, and the Doctor 
felt the stirring of spring in his blood. On the 
first hint from SJcye he sprang from his chair, 
declaring it was a sin to be in the house on such 
a day, and went out in such haste that he had 
to return for his hat. As he went up the walk, 
the Doctor plucked some early lilies and placed 
them in his coat ; he threw so many stones that 
Skye forgot his habit of body and ecclesiastical 
position ; and he was altogether so youthful and 
frolicsome that John was seriously alarmed, and 
afterwards remarked to Rebecca that he was not 
unprepared for calamity. 

" The best o 's tempts Providence at a time, 
and when a man like the Doctor tries tae rin 
aifter his dog jidgment canna be far off. A 'm 
no sayin'," John concluded with characteristic 
modesty, " that onybody cud tell what was 
coming, but a' jaloused there wud be tribble." 

Kate Carnegie. 



April I 

" ' I ""HEY were gude men 'at githered ablovv 
-L the beech-tree in the kirkyaird on a Sab- 
bath mornin'," he said aloud, and tiie new ac- 
cent had now lost itself altogether in an older 
tongue j " and there wesna a truer hert amang 
them a' than Jamie. Gin he hed been spared 
tae gie me a shak o' his hand, a' wud hae been 
comforted ; an' aifter him a' wud like a word 
frae Drumsheugh. A' wunner gin he be still 
tae the fore. ' ' The Days of A uld Lang Syne. 

April 2 

SENSIBLE and book-reading men do not 
hunger for six courses, but they are criti- 
cal about their toast and . . . nothing more, 
for that is the pulse. Then a man also hates 
to have any fixed hour for breakfast — never 
thinking without a shudder of houses where they 
have prayers at 7.50 — but a man refuses to 
be kept waiting five minutes for dinner. If a 
woman will find his belongings, which he has 
scattered over three rooms and the hall, he in- 
vests her with many virtues; and if she packs 
his portmanteau, he will associate her with St. 
Theresa. But if his hostess be inclined to dis- 
cuss problems with him, he will receive her 
name with marked coldness 5 and if she follow 
up this trial with evil food, he will conceive a 
rooted dislike for her, and will flee her house. 
So simple is a man. Kate Carnegie. 



April 3 

JESUS expected that His love would have a 
wider range than the fellowship ot Galilee, 
and that the world would yield to its spell. It 
was not for St. John, His friend, Jesus laid down 
His life ; it was for the Race into which He had 
been born and which He carried in His heart. 
No one has ever made such a sacrifice for Hu- 
manity. No one has dared to ask. such a recom- 
pense. The eternal Son of God gave Himself 
without reserve, and anticipated that to all time 
men would give themselves for Him. He pro- 
posed to inspire His Race with a personal devo- 
tion, and that profound devotion was to be their 
salvation. " Give me a cross whereon to die," 
said Jesus, " and I will make thereof a throne 
from which to rule the world." 

The Mind of tJie Master. 



April 4 

THE preacher, to succeed, must be Peter as 
he denies his Lord, and Mary as her brotlier 
dies, and the Syrian woman as she sees Christ 
yield to her irresistible importunity. This bap- 
tism into the heart of a subject, till the preacher 
and sermon be of one blood, is a secret process 
that can go on as the minister does his work, but 
is much accelerated on his quiet walks and in his 
lonely hours. The Cure of Souls. 



April 5 

WHEN the Church of Christ receives a rein- 
forcement of common sense, and man- 
ages her aifairs with as much shrewdness as a 
bank, one is certain that her rulers will make 
some salutary reforms. Incapable men will be 
removed without hesitation, on the sound prin- 
ciple that the ministry exists for the Church, and 
not the Church for the ministry. The man and 
his work will also be harmonised. 

The Cure of Souls. 

April 6 

WHEN a biographer of Jesus, more distin- 
guished perhaps by his laborious detail 
than his insight into truth, seriously recommends 
Jesus to the notice of the world by certificates 
from Rousseau and Napoleon, or when some 
light-hearted man of letters embroiders a needy 
paragraph with a string of names where Jesus is 
wedged in between Zoroaster and Goethe, the 
Christian consciousness is aghast. This treat- 
ment is not merely bad taste ; it is impossible by 
any canon of thought; it is as if one should com- 
pare the sun with electric light, or the colour of 
Titian with the bloom of the rose. We criticise 
every other teacher; we have an intuition of 
Jesus. He is not a subject of study, He is a 
revelation to the soul — that or nothing. 

The Mind of the Master. 



April 7 

OUR kirkyard was on a height facing the 
south, with the massy Tochty woods on 
one side and the manse on the other, while down 
below — a meadow between — the river ran, 
so that its sound could just be heard in clear 
weather. From its vantage one could see the 
Ochils as well as one of the Lomonds, and was 
only cut off from the Sidlaws by Tochty woods. 
It was not well kept, after the town's fashion, 
having no walk, save the broad track to the kirk 
door and a narrower one to the manse garden ; 
no cypresses or weeping willows or beds of 
flowers — only four or five big trees had flung 
their kindly shadow for generations over the 
place where the fathers of the Glen took their 
long rest. The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



April 8 

THIS is not an intellectual proposition to 
be asserted and proved, or a fancy to be 
tracked out and exhibited. This is a spiritual 
truth to be commended to faith, a living prin- 
ciple to be enforced on conscience. It must, 
therefore, be first imprinted on the preacher's 
soul till It has become a part of his own being, 
before he can really understand or declare it. 

The Cure of Souls, 



April 9 

WHEN Jesus rose from the dead He found 
that one of His apostles had not kept 
Easter Day, and would not accept His Resur- 
rection unless Jesus afforded him physical proof 
of the most humble and elementary kind. Je- 
sus conceded to Love what could not be given 
to faith, and St. Thomas, who had lost faith in 
Jesus' humanity, rose to the faith of His divinity. 
But Jesus reproached him, and rated his faith 
at a low value. It was only a bastard faith 
that had not freed itself of sight. 

"What," said St. Augustine, "is Faith, 
but to believe what you do not see ? " It was 
a happy epitome of the teaching of Jesus. With 
Jesus Faith is the opposite of sight. 

The Mind of the Master. 

April lo 

ONE comes upon a person that has not one 
point of contact with the thought-world : 
he eats, digests, moves, — we say he exists. 
One comes on another full of ideas, plans, 
dreams, ambitions, — we say he is alive. It is 
the approximate statement of a fact in human 
history. When the former dies we are not 
astonished, because it had never struck us that 
he was alive. When the latter dies we are 
shocked, the disappearance of that radiant man 
is a catastrophe. The Mind of the Master. 



April 1 1 

HERE and there the minister would stop as 
a trout leapt in a pool, or a flock, of wild 
duck crossed the sky to Loch Sheuchie, or the 
cattle thrust inquisitive noses through some 
hedge, as a student snatches a mouthful from 
some book in passing. For these walks were 
his best study; when thinking of his people in 
their goodness and simplicity, and touched by 
nature at her gentlest, he was fref d from many 
vain ideas of the schools and from artificial 
learning, and heard the Galilean speak as He 
used to do among the fields of corn. 

Kate Carnezie- 

April 12 

IT was natural that the imagination of Jesus 
should inspire heroic souls in every age ; it 
was perhaps inevitable that few could enter into 
His mind. Nothing has given such a moral im- 
petus to human society; nothing has conferred 
such nobility of character as the Kingdom of 
God; nothing has been so sadly misunderstood. 
The sublime self-restraint of Jesus, His inex- 
haustible patience, His immovable charity. His 
unerring insight, did not descend to certain of 
His disciples. They longed to anticipate the 
victory of righteousness, and burned to cleanse 
the world by force. Such eager souls gained 
for themselves an imperishable name, but they 
failed. The Mindofthe Masier. 



April 13 

PUBLIC worship ought to be comforting, 
joyful, enthusiastic, beautiful, the flower 
of all the week, but its chief note should be rever- 
ence and godly fear. Praise and prayer, the 
reading of Holy Scripture, and the preaching of 
the Evangel, should conspire to lift the congre- 
gation above the present world and the sensible 
atmosphere in which they have been living, and 
bring them face to face with the Eternal. 

T)ie Cure of Sauls ■ 



April 14 



"'A' 



prayed last nicht that the Lord wud 
leave Saunders till the laddies cud dae 
for themselves, an' thae words came intae ma 
mind, "Weeping may endure for a nicht, but 
joy cometh in the mornin'." 

" ' The Lord heard ma prayer, and joy hes 
come in the mornin',' an' she gripped the 
doctor's hand. 

*" Ye've been the instrument. Doctor Mac- 
Lure. Ye wudna gie him up, and ye did what 
nae ither cud for him, an' a' ve ma man the day, 
and tlie bairns hae their father.' 

"An' afore MacLure kent what she was 
daein', Bell lifted his hand to her lips an' 
Kissed It. Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



April 15 

JESUS crystallised the idea of Faith which is 
held in solution througliout the Bible, and 
rests on the assumption of two worlds. There 
is the physical world which lies round us on 
every side, and of which our bodies are a part. 
This is one environment, and the instrument of 
knowledge here is sight. There is the spiritual 
world which is hidden by the veil of the physi- 
cal, and of which our souls are a part. This 
is another environment, and the instrument of 
knowledge here is faith. -riie Mind oftke Master. 

April 16 

JESUS was not an agreeable sentimentalist 
who imagined that He could cleanse the 
world by rose-water; He was the only thinker 
who grasped the whole situation root and branch. 
He did not propose to make sin illegal ; that had 
been done without conspicuous benefit. He pro- 
posed to make sin impossible by replacing it with 
love. If sin be an act of self-will, each per- 
son making himself the centre, then Love is the 
destruction of sin, because Love connects Instead 
of isolating. No one can be envious, avaricious, 
hard-hearted; no one can be gross, sensual, im- 
clean. If he loves. Love is the death of all bit- 
ter and unholy moods of the soul, because Love 
lifts the man out of himself and teaches him to 
live in another. r/ie Mhidofilu Master. 



/ 



April 17 

No one can exaggerate the opportunity given 
to a preacher when, on the morning of the 
first day of the week, he ascends the pulpit and 
faces a congregation who are gathered in the 
name of Jesus, and wait to hear what he has to 
say to them concerning the things which are 
unseen and eternal. Each man carries his own 
burden of unbelief, sorrow, temptation, care, 
into the House of God, and the preacher has to 
hearten all; for, indeed, the work of the pulpit 
in our day is not so much to teach or define as 
to stimulate and encourage. TIte Cure 0/ Souls. 

April 18 

" '\70U'RE not away yet, Burnbrae, you're 
X not away y et ; it ' s not so easy to turn out 
a Drumtochty man as our English factor thought : 
we 're a stiff folk, and our roots grip fast. 

" He was to rule this parish, and he was to do 
as he pleased witli honest men; we'll see who 
comes off best before the day is done," and the 
doctor struck his stick, the stick of office with 
the golden head, on the gravel in triumph. 

" You 've just come in time, Mrs. Baxter" 
— for Jean had been putting herself in order — 
" for I want to give you a bit of advice. Do 
not lift any more of your plants — it's bad for 
their growth ; and I rather think you '11 have to 
put them back. ' ' ^he Days of A idd Lang Syne. 



April 19 

1"'HE richest heritage of an old congregation 
is not her endowments, but her history, 
the names of saints which can be read on her 
faded rolls, and the record of their works. The 
ambition of a new congregation ought to be the 
attainment of a worthy model in its first plastic 
years. For character is transmitted in ecclesi- 
astical as surely as in family life, so that men 
have the hereditary features of their congrega- 
tion — a certain accent in doctrine, a certain 
manner in work, a certain attitude of faith. 

TJte Cure of Souls. 



April 20 

JESUS did not create goodness — her fair form 
had been already carved in white marble by 
austere hands; His office was to place a soul 
within the ribs of death till the cold stone 
changed into a living body. Before Jesus, 
goodness was sterile, since Jesus, goodness has 
blossomed; He fertilised it with His spirit. It 
was a theory, it became a force. He took the 
corn, which had been long stored in the grana- 
ries of philosophy, and sowed it in the soft 
spring earth; He minted the gold and made it 
current coin. Christianity is in Religion what 
steam is in mechanics, the power which drives. 
Tkc Mind of the Master. 



April 21 

"'~r"'HIS is what ye hev dune, and ye let a 
X woman see yir wark. Ye are an auld 
man, and in sore travail, but a' tell ye before 
God ye hae the greater shame. Juist twenty 
years o' age this spring, and her mither dead. 
Nae woman to watch over her, and she wan- 
dered frae the fold, and a' ye can dae is to tak 
her oot o' yir Bible. Wae 's me if oor Father 
had blotted out oor names frae the Book o' Life 
when we left His hoose.' But He sent His ain 
Son to seek us, an' a weary road He cam. A' 
tell ye, a man wudna leave a sheep tae perish 
as ye hae cast aff yir ain bairn." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 

>- 

April 22 

Two possessions we shall carrj' with us into 
the unseen : they are free of death, and in- 
alienable — one is character, the other is capac- 
ity. Is this capacity to be consigned to idleness 
and wantonly wasted ? It were unreason : it 
were almost a crime. How this or that gift can 
be utilised in the other world is a vain question, 
and leads to childish speculation. We do not 
know where the unseen universe is, nor how it 
is constituted, much less how it is ordered, but 
our reason may safely conclude that the capacity 
which is exercised under one form here will be 
exercised under another yonder. 

TJie Mind of the Master. 



April 23 



IT seemeth to us, when we are still young, 
both clever and profitable to make a hearer 
ashamed of his sin by putting him in the pillory 
and pelting him with epithets. Such is the in- 
curable perversity of human nature, that the 
man grows worse under the discipline, and even 
conceives an unconscionable dislike to the officer 
of justice. The Cure of Souls. 



April 24 

JEREMIAH SAUNDERSON had re- 
mained in the low estate of a "probationer" 
for twelve years after he left the Divinity Hall, 
where he was reported so great a scholar that 
the Professor of Apologetics spoke to him depre- 
catingly, and the Professor of Dogmatics openly 
consulted him on obscure writers. He had 
wooed twenty-three congregations in vain, from 
churches in the black country, where the colliers 
rose in squares of twenty, and went out with- 
out ceremony, to suburban places of worship 
where the beadle, after due consideration of the 
sermon, would take up the afternoon notices 
and ask that they be read at once for purposes 
of utility, which that unflinching functionary 
stated to the minister with accuracy and much 
faithfulness. Kate Camegie. 



April 25 

CHRIST did not ground His Christianity in 
thinking, or in doing, but, first of all, in 
being. It consisted in a certain type of soul — 
a spiritual shape of the inner self. Was a man 
satisfied with this type, and would he aim at it 
in his own life ? Would he put his name to the 
Sermon on the Mount, and place himself under 
Jesus' charge for its accomplishment ? Then he 
was a Christian according to the conditions laid 
down by Jesus in the fresh daybreak of His 
religion . 2-^^ j^i^^^ ^^/^^ Master. 



April 26 

SOMETIMES the pastor receives a sudden 
impulse to go to a certain house, and 
whether it come to him in his room or on the 
street, he obeys it with all possible speed. On 
the way he will reproach himself because he may 
be going on a needless errand, and he will be 
abashed on the door-step because he has no ex- 
cuse for calling. He needs none, as it appears, 
for he discovers in nine cases out of ten that he 
is needed in that house, and that his arrival is 
considered a providence. It is really something 
higher and finer — a guidance of the Chief 
Shepherd by the inward light of His Spirit. 

The Cure qfSouh. 



April 27 

BUT not even Hillocks, with all his bland- 
ishments, could wile them wlthin-doors 
that evening. John Ross saw his mother sliad- 
ing her eyes at the garden gate, and wearying 
for the sight of his head above the hill, and al- 
ready David Baxter seemed to hear his father's 
voice, ' ' God bless ye, laddie ; welcome hame, 
an' weel dune." For the choice reward of a 
true man's work is not the applause of the street, 
which comes and goes, but the pride of them 
that love him. Tlie Days of Auld Lang Sytie. 

"^ 

April 28 

THE Lodge had never been long without a 
young widow and a fatherless lad, but 
family history had no warning for him — in fact, 
seemed rather to be an inspiration in the old way 
— for no sooner had the young laird loved and 
married than he would hear of another rebellion, 
and ride off some morning to fight for that ill- 
fated dynasty the love of which was ever another 
name for death. There was always a Carnegie 
ready as soon as the white cockade appeared 
anywhere in Scotland, and each of the house 
fought like the men before him, save that he 
brought fewer at his back and had less in his 
pocket. Kate Carnegie. 



April 29 

No one can fail to notice tliat Jesus spent 
His life for the most part in the open air, 
and that the Gospels carry on them the breath 
of the country. He founded His kingdom on 
a hillside, where the wind blew as it listed, and 
His chosen oratory was under the silver olive- 
trees. Time and again Jesus fled to the desert, 
where the pasture-lilies grew in their unclothed 
multitude, or to some solitary place where He 
could be alone with God in the cool and silent 
night. The Upper Room. 



April 30 

MORAL truths ripen slowly; but given 
time, and Christianity was bound to be- 
come the most potent force in the state, although 
Jesus had never said one word about politics, 
and His apostles had adhered closely to His 
example. Men who have been fed with Christ's 
bread, and in whose heart His spirit is striving, 
will not long tolerate slavery, tyranny, vice, or 
ignorance. If they do not apply the principle 
to the fact to-day, tliey will to-morrow. Their 
conscience is helpless in the grip of Christ's 
word. They will be constrained to labour in 
tlie cause of Christ, and when their work is done 
men will praise them. The Mmdofthe Master. 




WHEN George came home for the last 
time, Marget went back and forward 
all afternoon from his bedroom to the window, 
and hid herself beneath the laburnum to see his 
face as the cart stood before the stile. It told 
her plain what she had feared, and Marget 
passed through her Gethsemane with the gold 
blossoms falling on her face. When their eyes 
met, and before she helped him down, mother 
and son understood. 

" Ye mind what I told ye, o' the Greek 
mothers, the day I left. Weel, I wud hae liked 
to have carried my shield, but it wasna to be, so 
I 've come home on it." As they went slowly 
up the garden walk, " I've got my degree, a 
double first, mathematics and classics." 

"Ye've been a gude soldier, George, and 
faithfu'." 

" Unto death, a'm dootin', mother." 

" Na," said Marget, "unto life." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



May I 

WHEN a good cause finds a befitting leader, 
it will be victorious before set of sun. 
David had about him such a grace of beauty and 
chivalry that his officers risked their lives to 
bring him a cup of water, and his people car- 
ried him to the throne of Israel on the love of 
their hearts. Human nature has two domi- 
nant instincts — the spring of all action as well 
as the subject of all literature — Faith and 
Love. The religion which unites them will 
be omnipotent. The Mind of the Master. 



May 2 

THE conclusive proof that we are already in 
the midst of a true and sane mysticism is 
the instinctive return to Christ, where on every 
side and from all schools Christian souls are 
making for their place of birth, as fish find again 
their native stream. Many traditions have been 
swept away, and many theories laid aside ; but 
above the dust of controversy rises the face of 
Christ. Surely there has been no age since that 
early morn, when the echo of His footsteps was 
still on earth, and His very appearance in the 
flesh was remembered, wherein Christians have 
been so anxious to understand what Jesus was 
and what He taught. The Cure o/Smds. 



May 3 

IF the proletariat is to be won for Christ, it 
will not be by patronage, but by brotherly 
sympathy and co-operation. The ideal is that 
a Church of the west and another of the east 
should go into partnership, combining their 
resources of means and men, and so the gaping 
wounds of society will be bound and healed; 
for Christ alone, by His humanity and Church, 
can be the meeting-place for all kinds and 
conditions of men. n^ cure of Smth. 



May 4 

JESUS wrote no book ; He formed no system ; 
His words were jets of truth, and chose 
their own forms. The Empire was not within 
the consciousness of Jesus : His only point of 
contact with Rome was the Cross. When His 
following wished to make Him a King, He shud- 
dered and fled as from an insult. As for wealth, 
it seemed so dangerous that He laid poverty as 
a condition on His disciples, and Himself knew 
not where to lay His head. You cannot trace 
Jesus : you cannot analyse Jesus. His intense 
spirituality of soul. His simplicity of thought, 
His continual self-abnegation, and His unaf- 
fected humility descended on a worn-out hope- 
less world, like dew upon the dry grass. 

Tlie Mind of the Master. 



May 5 

DEAR MISS CARNEGIE, — They say 
that a woman always knows when a man 
loves her, and if so you will not be astonished 
at this letter. From that day I saw you in 
Drumtochty Kirk I have loved you, and every 
week I love you more. My mother is the only 
other woman I have ever cared for, and that is 
different. Will you be my wife } . . . You 
will have all my heart, and I'll do my best to 
make you hapjiy. 

" I am, yours very sincerely, 

" Hay." 

^^ JCaie Carnegie. 

May 6 

DEAR LORD HAY, — You have done 
me the greatest honour any woman can 
receive at your hands, and for two days I have 
thought of nothing else. If it were enough 
that your wife should like and respect you, then 
I would at once accept you as my betrothed, 
but as it is plain to me that no woman ought 
to marry any one unless she also loves him, I 
am obliged to refuse one of the truest men I 
have ever met, for whom I have a very kindly 
place in my heart, and whose happiness I shall 
always desire. — Believe me, yours sincerely, 
" Kate Carnegie." 

Kate Cartiegie. 



May 7 

IT goes withovit saying that Jesus' sense of 
the Fatherhood must be supreme. It is a 
contradiction of the Gospels to say that it was 
exclusive. Jesus toiled for three years to write 
the truth of the Fatherhood on the minds of the 
disciples, with at least one result, that it is in- 
terwoven with the pattern of the Gospels. He 
pleaded also with His friends that they should 
receive it into their hearts till St. John filled. his 
epistles with this word. With minute and af- 
fectionate care, Jesus described the whole circle 
of religious thought, and stated it in terms of the 
Fatherhood. The Mind of the Master. 



May 8 

THE minister stood still before that spec- 
tacle, his face bathed in the golden glory, 
and then before his eyes the gold deepened into 
an awful red, and the red passed into shades of 
violet and green, beyond painter's hand or the 
imagination of man. It seemed to him as if a 
victorious saint had entered through the gates 
into the city, washed in the blood of the Lamb, 
and the after-glow of his mother's life fell sol- 
emnly on his soul. The last trace of sunset had 
faded from the hills when the minister came in, 
and his face was of one who had seen a vision. 
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



May 9 

WHEN the first ray shot through the win- 
dow and trembled on the bed, Jamie 
raised himself and listened. He shaded his eyes 
with his hand, as if he were watching for some 
one and could not see clearly for excess of light. 

"Menie!'" he cried suddenly, with a new 
voice, " a've keepit oor tryst." 

When they laid him in the coffin — the Bible 
in his hands — the smile was still on his face, 
and he appeared a man some forty years of 
^S^- The Days of A uld Lang Syne. 

May lo 

JESUS' Kingdom commends itself to the 
imagination because it is to come, when 
God's will is done on earth as it is done in 
heaven — it is the Kingdom of the Beatitudes, 
It commends itself to the reason because it has 
come wherever any one is attempting God's will 
— it is the Kingdom of the Parables. An ideal 
state, it ever allures and inspires its subjects ; 
a real state, it sustains, commands them. Had 
Jesus conceived His Kingdom as in the future 
only. He had made His disciples dreamers ; had 
He centred it in the present only. He had made 
them theorists. As it is, one labours on its 
building with a splendid model before his eyes; 
one possesses it in his heart, and yet is ever enter- 
ing into its fulness. riie Mind of the Master. 



May II 

BETWEEN our science and every other 
there is this difference, that in other de- 
partments of knowledge one must know to love, 
in Christian theology one must love to know. 
In vain will be every place of learning, however 
thoroughly equipped, and any masters, however 
scholarly ; in vain will be all books and study, 
if the soul have no spiritual vision. 

hjj The Cure of Souls. 

May 12 

JESUS' idea lifts Christianity above the plane 
of arid discussion and places it in the region 
of poetry, where the emotions have full play and 
Faith is vision. Theology becomes the expla- 
nation of the fellowship between the soul and 
Jesus. Regeneration is the entrance into His 
life. Justification the partaking of His Cross, 
Sanctification the transformation into His char- 
acter. Death the coming of the Lord, Heaven 
His unveiled Face. Doctrines will be but moods 
of the Christ-consciousness; parables of the 
Christ-life. Suffering will be the baptism of 
Jesus and the drinking of His cup, and if every 
saint have not the stigmata on his hands and feet, 
he will at least, like Simon the Cyrenian, have 
the mark of the Cross upon his shoulder. And 
service will be the personal tribute to Jesus, 
whom we shall recognise under any disguise. 

The Mind of the Master. 



May 13 

ILLUSTRATION is either panoramic or 
miniature painting, but, on the whole, must 
be on the larger rather than on the smaller scale. 
Whether it be description or allusion, the illus- 
tration is never to be used as a mere opportunity 
of displaying the speaker's eloquence or learn- 
ing. It is not a pyrotechnic display before 
which a crowd stands in admiration, but a lamp 
by whose light the traveller finds his way along 
the dark street. The Cure 0/ Souls. 

May 14 

" ' I "HERE 'S some o' thae Muirtown drapers 

±. can busk oot their windows that ye canna 
pass withoot lookin' ; there ' s bits o' blue and bits 
o' red, and a ribbon here an' a lace yonder. 

"It's a bonnie show and denty, an' no 
wunner the lassies stan' and stare. 

" But gae intae the shop, and peety me, 
there 's next tae naethin' ; it 's a' in the window. 

" Noo, that's Maister Popinjay, as neat an' 
fikey a little mannie as ever a' saw in a black goon . 

' ' His bit sermon wes six poems — five a' hed 
heard afore — four anecdotes — three aboot him- 
sel' and ain aboot a lord — twa burnies, ae floo'r 
gairden, and a snowstorm, wi' the text thirteen 
times and * beloved' twal; that was a' ; a takin' 
window, and Netherton's lassies cudna sleep 
thinkin' o' him." Beside t/te Bo^mie Brier Busk. 



May 15 

NEITHER this world in its poverty nor the 
next in its weahh is to be compared with 
Hfe, any more than a body with a soul. The 
great loss of the present is to exchange your life 
for this world, the great gain in the world to 
come is still to obtain life. The point of con- 
nection between the seen and the unseen — the 
only bridge that spans the gulf — is life. In 
this state of things we settle its direction, in the 
next we shall see its perfection. According to 
the drift of Jesus' preaching, the whole spiritual 
content of this present life, its knowledge, skill, 
aspirations, character, will be carried over into 
the future, and life hereafter be the continuation 
of life here. Tlie Mind 0/ the Master. 

May 16 

HIS aunt could only meet him in the study, 
and when he looked on her his lip 
quivered, for his heart was wrung with one wist- 
ful regret. 

" Oh, auntie, if she had only been spared to 
see this day, and her prayers answered." 
But his aunt flung her arms round his neck. 
"Dinna be cast doon, laddie, nor be un- 
believin\ Yir mither has heard every word, and 
is satisfied, for ye did it in remembrance o' her, 
and yon was yir mitlier's sermon." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



May 17 

TRAVEL must be used very skilfully and 
sparingly, because the Righi and the Bay 
of Naples are not now unknown to a congrega- 
tion. On the whole, it may be also better for 
the average man not to go to the Holy Land 
for the sake of his people vmless he has great 
self-control. riie Cure of Souls. 

May 18 

BOOK-SHELVES had long ago failed to 
accommodate Rabbi's treasures, and the 
floor had been bravely utilised. Islands of books, 
rugged and perpendicular, rose on every side; 
long promontories reached out from the shore, 
varied by bold headlands; and so broken and 
varied was that floor that the Rabbi was pleased 
to call it the ^gean Sea, where he had his 
Lesbos and his Samos. It is absolutely incred- 
ible, but it is all the same a simple fact, that 
he knew every book and its location, having a 
sense of the feel as well as the shape of his 
favourites. This was not because he had the 
faintest approach to orderliness — for he would 
take down twenty volumes and never restore 
them to the same place by any chance. It was 
a sort of motherly instinct by which he watched 
over them all, even loved prodigals that wan- 
dered over all the study and then set off on 
adventurous journeys into distant rooms. 

Kate Carnegie. 



May 19 

WERE it possible to place a foolscap on 
one of our most sublime ideas, and turn 
immortality itself into an absurdity, it is done 
when a vulgar imagination has peddled with the 
details of the future, and has accomplished a 
travesty of the Revelation of St. John. From 
time to time ignorant charlatans will trade on 
religious simplicity and trifle with sacred emo- 
tions, whose foolishness and profanity go before 
them unto judgment. Heaven is the noblest 
imagination of the human heart, and any one 
who robs this imagination of its august dignity 
and spiritual splendour has committed a crime. 
The Mind of the Master. 

May 20 

WHEN they parted that Sabbath afternoon 
it was the younger man that had lost 
his temper, and the other did not offer to shake 
hands. 

Perhaps the minister would have understood 
Lachlan better if he had known that the old man 
could not touch food when he got home, and 
spent the evening in a fir wood praying for the 
lad he had begun to love. And Lachlan would 
have had a lighter heart if he hatl heard the 
minister questioning himself whether he had 
denied the Evangel or sinned against one of 
Christ's disciples. They argued together ; they 
prayed apart. Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



May 21 

THE minister ought to be soaked in lite ; 
not that his sermons may never escape 
from local details, but rather that, being in con- 
tact with the life nearest him, he may state his 
gospel in terms of human experience. No doc- 
trine of the Christian Faith is worth preserving 
which cannot be verified in daily life, and no 
doctrine will need to be defended when stated 
in human terms — above all, in the language 
of Home. The Cure of Souh. 

>^ 

May 11 

"ATfE'REa' sorry for Burnbrae, for the 
V V brunt o' the battle 'ill fa' on him, an' 
he 's been a gude neebur tae a'body, but there 's 
nae fear o' him buying his lease wi' his kirk. 
Ma certes, the factor chose the worst man in 
the Glen for an affgo. Burnbrae wud raither 
see his hale plenishing gae doon the Tochty 
than play Judas to his kirk. It 's an awfu' peety 
that oor auld Scotch kirk wes split, and it wud 
be a heartsome sicht tae see the Glen a' aneath 
ae roof aince a week. But ae thing we maun 
grant, the Disruption lat the warld ken there 
wes some spunk in Scotland. There 's nae 
man a' wud raither welcome tae oor kirk than 
Burnbrae, gin he cam o' his ain free will, but 
it wud be better that the kirk sud stand empty 
than be filled wi' a factor's hirelings." 

The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



May 23 

THEOLOGICAL pedantry had done its 
work in the days of Jesus, and had reduced 
the sublime ethics of the Old Testament to a 
wearisome absurdity. The beneficent law of 
rest, so full of sympathy with struggling people, 
was translated into a series of regulations of ped- 
dling detail and incredible childishness. The 
" clean heart " of the prophets sank into an end- 
less washing of hands, and filial piety was wan- 
tonly outraged that the temple taxes might be 
swollen. Jewish faith had become a painted 
show, a husk in which the kernel had withered. 
The Mind of the Master. 
>^ 

May 24 

THE contrast is not between those who wor- 
ship in churches and those who worship 
at home, but between those whose faith in the 
Risen Christ is so real and strong that it draws 
men together on the first day of the week to cele- 
brate His resurrection, by which He has become 
the Living Way unto the Father, and those to 
whom this chief event in human history is a fond 
imagination, and whose idea of God is so vague 
and impersonal, that they can find Him in the 
running of a stream as surely as in the face of 
Christ. Tlie Cure of Souls. 



May 25 

CARMICHAEL was standing in the shadow 
as Saunderson came along the road, and 
the faint light was a perfect atmosphere for the 
dear old bookman. Standing at his full height 
he might have been six feet, but, with much por- 
ing over books and meditation, he had de- 
scended some three inches. His hair was long, 
not because he made any conscious claim to 
genius, but because he forgot to get it cut, 
and, with his flowing, untrimmcd beard, was 
now quite grey. Within his clothes he was the 
merest skeleton, being so thin that his shoulder- 
blades stood out in sharp outline, and his hands 
were almost transparent. The redeeming fea- 
ture in Saunderson was his eyes, which were 
large and eloquent, of a trustful, wistful hazel, 
the beautiful eyes of a dumb animal. 

Kate Carnegie. 

May 16 

JESUS did not ignore the black shadow of 
sin; He did not fall into the sickly opti- 
mism of last century. Jesus did not regard man 
as the sport of a cruel Fate ; He did not yield 
to the gloomy pessimism which is settling down 
on this dying century. He illuminated the 
darkness of human misery with the light of a 
Divine purpose, and made the evidence for des- 
pair an argument for hope. The Mind oftlie Master. 



May 27 

WHEN a speaker is pleading a great cause, 
and sees hard-headed men glaring be- 
fore them with such ferocity that every one 
knows they are afraid of breaking down, let him 
stop in the middle of a paragraph and take the 
collection, and if he be declaring the Evangel, 
and a certain tenderness comes over the faces 
of the people, let him close his words to them 
and call them to prayer. The Cure of Souls. 

May 28 

" T AMIE," and a flush of joy came over the 

J pale, thin face, that he would hardly 

have recognised, " this is gude . . . o' ye . . . 

tae come sae far, ... a' wes wantin' . . . tae 

see a Drumtochty face afore a' " Then 

the tears choked her words. 

" Ou ay," began Jamie with deliberation. 
" You see, a' wes up lookin' aifter some o' 
Drumsheugh's fat cattle that he sent aff tae the 
London market, so of coorse a' cudna be here 
withoot giein' ye a cry. 

" It wes a ploy tae find ye, juist like hide- 
an'-seek, but, ma certes, ye hev got a fine 
hame at laist," and Jamie appraised the dainty 
bed, the soft carpet, the little table with ice and 
fruit and flowers, at their untold value of 
kindness. rite Days of A uld Lang Syue. 



May 29 

No Christian man now believes that a word 
can be said for slavery. No one now 
would be moved by a hundred texts in its favour. 
Slavery has been condemned both by the spirit 
and by the teaching of Jesus. When He taught 
the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man 
followed, and the end of slavery became merely 
a matter of time. It is growing clearer that 
many doctrines of Christian men are not lasting, 
but that every word of Jesus is eternal. 

The Mind of the Master. 

May 30 

SHE is a good wife who manages the minis- 
ter's house with skill and economy, so that 
he has to give no thought to domestic affairs, 
who brings up her children in the Divine Love, 
whose father has so little time for their over- 
sight, who carries herself so wisely and kindly 
among his people that none are offended — for 
they have a sense of property in her too which is 
very pleasant: who advises her husband on every 
important matter, and often restrains him from 
hasty speech ; and who receives him weary, 
discouraged, irritable, and sends him out again 
strong, hopeful, sweet-tempered. 

The Cure 0/ Souls. 



" A /T A bairn! ma bairn! God hae mercy upon 

iVJL her!" and Elspeth's cry ran through 
the bonnie birk wood and rose through the 
smiling sky to a God that seemed to give no 
heed. 

" Whar is she ? " was all Posty asked, tear- 
ing off his coat and waistcoat, for he had heard 
the cry as he was going to the mill, and took the 
lade at a leap to lose no time. 

<' Yonder, Posty, but ye . . ." 

He was already in the depths, while the 
mother hung over the edge of the merciless 
flood. It seemed an hour — It was not actually 
a minute — before he appeared, with the blood 
pouring from a gash on his forehead, and hung 
for a few seconds on a rock for air. 

•♦ Come oot, Postyj ye hae a wife an' bairns, 
an' ye '11 be drooned! " for Elspeth was a brave- 
hearted, unselfish woman. 

" A '11 hae Elsie first," and down he went 
again, where the torrent raged against the rocks. 

This time he came up at once, with Elsie, a 
poor little bundle, in his arms. 

" Tak her quick! " he gasped, clinging with 
one hand to a jagged point. 

The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



" ' I ""HIS is the last time we shall meet, Miss 
J. Carnegie. Forgive me for my love, 
and believe that one man will ever remember 
and . . . pray for you." 

Carmichael bowed low, the last sunshine of 
the evening playing on his fair hair, and turned 

"One word, if you please," said Kate, and 
they looked into one another's eyes, the blue 
and brown, seeing many things that cannot be 
written. " You may be forgiven for . . . lov- 
ing me, because you could not help that " — 
this with a very roguish look, our Kate all 
over — " and I suppose you must be forgiven 
for listening to foolish gossip, since people will 
tell lies " — this with a stamp of the foot, our 
Kate again — " but I shall never forgive you 
if you leave me, never" — this was a new 
Kate, like to the opening of a flower. 

"Why.? Tell me plainly;" and in the 
silence Carmichael heard a trout leap in the 
river. 

" Because I love you." 

The Tochty water sang a pleasant song, and 
the sun set gloriously behind Ben Urtach. 

Kate Carnegie. 



June I 

WE must simply accept the words of Jesus, 
and it is an unspeakable relief to find 
our Master crowning His teaching on character 
with the scene of the Last Judgment. The 
prophecy of conscience will not be put to 
shame, nor the continuity of this life be broken. 
When the parabolic form is reduced and the 
accidental details laid aside, it remains that the 
Book of Judgment is the Sermon on the Mount, 
and that each soul is tried by its likeness to the 
Judge Himself. Jesus has prepared the world 
for a startling surprise, but it will not be the 
contradiction of our present moral experience: 
it will be the revelation of our present hidden 
character. j-ke Mind of Uie Master. 



June 1 

IT is insulting to the preacher to suppose 
that because he journeyed towards the 
south pole to-day he denies the north pole, 
and exasperating to the hearers to be hurried 
backwards and forwards in opposite directions 
lest they should rush to extremes. Preacher 
and hearers should give themselves to one idea 
with as much concentration as if there were not 
another in the universe of thought. This is to 
focus the mind. TJie Cnre of Souh. 



June 3 

BEYOND all question, and apart from all 
theories, Jesus is the Revelation of the 
Divine goodness: the incarnate Law of God: 
the objective conscience of Humanity. As 
soon as we enter the presence of Jesus we lose 
the liberty of moral indifference. One Person 
we cannot avoid — the inevitable Christ; one 
dilemma we must face, " What shall I do with 
Jesus which is called Christ?" The spiritual 
majesty of this Man arraigns us at His bar 
from which we cannot depart till we become 
His disciples or His critics, His friends or His 
enemies. T!ie Mind o/Uw Master. 

June 4 

THERE is a certain point where the road 
from Kildrummie disentangles itself from 
the wood, and begins the descent to Tochty 
Bridge. Drumtochty exiles used to stand there 
for a space and rest their eyes on the Glen 
which they could now see, from the hills that 
made its western wall to the woods of Tochty 
that began below the parish kirk; and though 
each man might not be able to detect the old 
home, he had some landmark- — -a tree, or a 
rise of the hill — to distinguish the spot where 
he was born, and, if such were still his good 
fortune, where true hearts were waiting to bid 
him welcome. The Days of A uld Lang Syne. 



June 5 

ALMIGHTY FATHER, we are a' Thy 
puir and sinfu'' bairns, wha wearied o' 
hame and gaed awa' intae the far country. For- 
give us, for we didna ken what we were leavin' 
or the sair hert we gied oor Father. It was weary 
wark. tae live wi' oor sins, but we wud never 
hev come back had it no been for oor Elder 
Brither. He cam' a long road tae find us, 
and a sore travail He had afore He set us free. 
He's been a gude Brither tae us, and we've 
been a heavy chairge tae Him. May He keep 
a firm haud o' us, and guide us in the richt 
road, and bring us back gin we wander, and 
tell us a' we need tae know till the gloamin' 
come. Gither us in then, we pray Thee, and 
a' we luve, no a bairn missin', and may we sit 
doon for ever in oor ain Father's House. 
Amen. " Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 

If' 

June 6 

THE preacher may then congratulate him- 
self, for no teacher is satisfied till he has 
so lodged an idea in the mind that his people 
claim it as his own. He has an ample reward 
for his pains, when his people some day turn 
upon him and threaten to rend him for criticis- 
ing an idea which he himself taught them in 
the agony of his soul, and which they guard 
jealously as their personal property. 

The Cure of Soids. 



June 7 

VERY early in the morning Carmichael 
awoke, and being tempted by the sunrise, 
arose and went downstairs. As he came near 
the study door he heard a voice in prayer, and 
knew that the Rabbi had been all night in 
intercession. 

" Thou hast denied me wife and child 5 deny 
me not Thyself. ... A stranger Thou hast 
made me among men ; refuse me not a place in 
the City. . . . Deal graciously with this lad who 
has been to me as a son in the Gospel. . . . He 
has not despised an old man; put not his heart 
to confusion. ..." Kate Carnegie. 

June 8 

JESUS utilises the great parable of the Family 
for the last time; and as He had invested 
Fatherhood and Sonhood with their highest 
meaning so He now spiritualises Home. What 
Mary's cottage at Bethany had been to the little 
company during the Holy Week, with its quiet 
rest after the daily turmoil of Jerusalem ; what 
some humble house on the shore of Galilee was 
to St. John, with its associations of Salome ; what 
the great Temple was to the pious Jews, with 
its Presence of the Eternal, that on the higher 
scale was Heaven. Jesus availed Himself of a 
wealth offender recollections and placed Heaven 
in the heart of humanity when He said, " My 
Father's House." The Mind of the Master. 



June 9 

THERE is no audience which does not ex- 
pect a certain elevation of style in religious 
speech, and which does not resent what is vulgar 
or technical. A preacher does not conciliate an 
uneducated audience by the use of slang or lapses 
into buffoonery, nor does he please cultured peo- 
ple by scholastic terms. People have an instinct 
about what they like to hear from the pulpit, and 
their desire is the language of the home and tlie 
market-place, raised to its highest power and 
glorified. The Cure of Souls. 

June lo 

SOME have argued that Religion is the ful- 
filment of duty; this is to settle Religion 
in the conscience and to reduce it to morality. 
Some have insisted that Religion is the accept- 
ance of revealed truth; this is to settle Religion 
in the reason, and to resolve Religion into knowl- 
edge. Some have pleaded that Religion is a 
state of feeling; this is to settle Religion in the 
heart and to dissolve it into emotion. The 
philosopher, the theologian, the mystic can each 
make out a good case, for each has without doubt 
represented a side of Religion. None of the 
three can exclude the other two ; all three cannot 
include Religion. xhe Mindofthe Master. 



June II 

""IT THEN a' entered this hoose ma hert wes 
V V sair, for a' thocht a defenceless lassie 
hed been ill-used in her straits, an' noo a' wud 
like to apologeeze for ma hot words." 

"Toots, man, what nonsense is this you're 
talking?" said Sir Andrew; "you don't under- 
stand the situation. The fact is, I wanted to 
study Lily's case, and it was handier to have 
her in my house. Just medical selfishness." 

"A' micht hae thocht o' that," and the in- 
telligence in Jamie's eye was so sympathetic that 
Sir Andrew quailed before it. " We hev a doc- 
tor in oor pairish that 's yir verra marra [equal] 
— aye practeesin' on the sick fouk, and for 
lookin' aifter himsel' he passes belief." 

The Days of A uld Lang Syne. 

June 12 

WHEN Jamie parted with Drumsheugh on 
the way home, and turned down the road 
to Mary's cottage, to give her the lilies and a full 
account of her lassie, Drumsheugh watched him 
till he disappeared. 

"Thirty pund wes what he drew frae the 
Muirtown bank oot o' his savin's, for the clerk 
telt me himsel', and naebody jalouses the trick. 
It 's the cleverest thing Jamie ever did, an' ane 
o' the best a 've seen in Drumtochty." 

The Days of A uld Lang Syne. 



June 13 

RELIGION with Jesus is not merely an 
influence diffused through our spiritual 
nature like heat through iron ; it has a separate 
existence. Religion is not a nomad that has to 
receive hospitality in some foreign department 
of the soul 5 it has its own home and habitation. 
It is a faculty of our constitution as much as 
Conscience or Reason, with Its own sphere of 
operations and peculiar function. . . . Jesus did 
not create Religion, it is a human instinct. He 
defined it, and Jesus' synonym for the faculty 
of Religion is Faith. r^ie Mind ofUie Master. 



June 14 

WE are all apt, as preachers, to be brow- 
beaten and reduced to silence by the im- 
pudent assertion that an average audience has no 
interest in theology, and will only listen to us 
upon the astounding condition that we do not 
give them the one thing we are supposed to have 
thoroughly learned. They expect from a his- 
torian history, from a geologist geology, but 
from a teacher of theology — and we are the 
only teachers of theology for the public — any- 
thing, however remote from the subject, pro- 
vided it be neither very solid nor thoughtful. 

TIic Ctere of Sotds. 



June 15 

HAD Jesus repeated the hackneyed pro- 
gramme of negation with a table of 
" shalt nots," He would have afforded another 
dreary instance of moral failure. When Jesus 
published His positive principle of Love, and left 
each man to draw up his own table. He gave 
a brilliant pledge of spiritual success. By this 
magical word of Love He not only brought the 
dry bones together and made a unity; He clothed 
them with flesh and made a living body. He 
may have forfeited the name of moralist, He has 
gained the name of Saviour. 

The Miiid of the Master. 



June 16 

OF course a system in its bare outlines is 
imsightly and repulsive, and people have 
complained, with fair reason, of the dry bones 
of doctrine. An uncovered skeleton is certainly 
a very unlovely object, and defies the art of 
speech, but it lies behind the rounded grace of 
Venus de Medici, and alone sustains the weight 
of language. How far the closely knit and 
symmetrical form ought to appear through the 
flesh and blood may be matter of taste, there 
being, so to say, masculine and feminine con- 
tours of thought, but luxuriance and winsome- 
ness must rest on strength. j-j^g Cure ofSouh. 



June 17 

WE did not speak of the " higher life," nor 
of a "beautiful Christian," for this 
way of putting it would not have been in 
keeping with the genius of Drumtochty. Re- 
ligion there was very lowly and modest — an 
inward walk with God. No man boasted of 
himself, none told the secrets of the soul. But 
the Glen took notice of its saints, and did 
them silent reverence, which they themselves 
never knew. Beside tJie Botmie Brier Bush. 

June 18 

WE have a robust common sense of moral- 
ity which refuses to believe that it does 
not matter whether a man has lived like the 
Apostle Paul or the Emperor Nero. One may 
hesitate to speculate about the circumstances 
of the other world; one may love the splendid 
imagination of the Apocalypse more than the 
vulgar realism of modern sentiment, but one 
can never crush out the conviction that there 
must be one place for St. John, who was 
Jesus' friend, and another for Judas Iscariot, 
who was His betrayer. It were unreasonable 
that this mad confusion of circumstances should 
continue, which ties up the saint and the mis- 
creant together to the misery of both; it were 
supremely reasonable that this tangle be un- 
ravelled and each receive his satisfaction. 

T/ie Mind of the Master. 



June 19 

HE was a minister of Dunleith, whose 
farmers preferred to play ball against 
the wall of the kirk to hearing him preach, 
and gave him insolence on his offering a pious 
remonstrance. Whereupon the Davidson of 
that day, being, like all his race, short in 
stature but mighty in strength, first beat the 
champion player one Sabbath morning at his 
own game to tame an unholy pride, and then 
thrashed him with his fist to do good to his 
soul. This happy achievement in practical 
theology secured an immediate congregation, 
and produced so salutary an effect on the schis- 
matic ball-player that he became in due course 
an elder, and was distinguished for his severity 
in dealing with persons absenting themselves 
from public worship, or giving themselves over- 
much to vain amusements. j^ate Carnegie. 



June 20 

OUR attitude to self-appointed religious 
speakers, and that of the medical pro- 
fession to quacks, is a striking contrast. We, 
as a rule, welcome this assistance, in the pub- 
lic interest, and doctors will have none of it, 
also in the public interest. Both professions 
are quite unselfish. Which is in the long-run 
right ? The Cure 0/ Sotth. 



June 21 

IT Is surely a narrow mind, and worse — 
a narrow heart — that would belittle the 
noble sayings that fell from the lips of outside 
saints or discredit the virtues of their character. 
Is it not more respectful to God, the Father of 
mankind, and more in keeping with the teaching 
of the Son of man, to believe that everywhere 
and in all ages can be found not only the 
prophecies and broken gleams, but also the 
very children of the kingdom ? In Clement's 
noble words, " Some with the consciousness 
of what Jesus is to them, others not as yet ; 
some as friends, others as faithful servants, 
others barely as servants." 

Tlie Mind of the Master. 

June 11 

THIS evening the years that were gone came 
back to Burnbrae. For a townsman may 
be born in one city and educated in a second, 
and married in a third, and work in a fourth. 
His houses are but inns, which he uses and 
forgets ; he has no roots, and is a vagrant on 
the face of the earth. But the countryman is 
born and bred, and marries and toils and dies 
on one farm, and the scene he looks at in his 
old age is the same he saw in his boyhood. 
His roots are struck deep into the soil, and if 
you tear them up, his heart withers and dies. 

Tlie Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



June 23 

MODERATOR, this is a terrible calam- 
ity that hes befaen oor brither, and 
a'm feelin' as if a' hed lost a bairn o' my ane, 
for a sweeter lassie didna cross oor kirk door. 
Nane o' us want tae know what hes happened 
or where she hes gane, and no a word o' this 
wull cross oor lips. Herfaither's dune mair 
than cud be expeckit o' mortal man, and noo 
we have oor duty. It's no the way o' this 
Session tae cut afF ony member o' the flock at a 
stroke, and we 'ill no begin with Flora Camp- 
bell. A' move. Moderator, that her case be 
left tae her faither and yersel, and oor neebur 
may depend on it that Flora's name and his ain 
will be mentioned in oor prayers, ilka mornin' 
an' nicht till the gude Shepherd o' the sheep 
brings her hame." Beside the Bonnie Brkr Bmh. 

June 24 

EVERY strong and clean word used of the 
people as they buy and sell, joy and 
sorrow, labour and suff"er, should be in the 
preacher's store, but he should add thereto 
splendid and gracious words from Milton and 
Spenser, from Goldsmith and Addison, and 
other masters of the English tongue. The 
ground may be a homely and serviceable grey, 
but through it should run a thread of gold. 

The Cure of Souls. 



June 25 

HE joineth Himself as by an accident to 
men on the ways of life, and afterwards 
maketh as though He would go farther. When 
they constrain Him to abide, it does not matter 
whether the soul be as a palace or a cottage; 
He will enter, and the tenant will become a 

saint. Tlie Upper Room. 

WHEN the Evangel ceased, or fell into 
contempt, the Church grew weak and 
corrupt. When the Evangel asserted Its ancient 
authority, the Church arose and put on her 
" beautiful garments. " Tke Cure of SotUs. 

June 26 

THE ages were linked together by a long 
tragedy of disappointment and vanity, but 
the Tochty ran now as in the former days. 
What was any human life but a drop in the 
river that flowed without ceasing to the un- 
known sea ? What could any one do but 
yield himself to necessity, and sumrrjon his 
courage to endure ? Then at the singing of a 
bird his mood lightened and was changed, as 
if he had heard the Evangel. God was over 
all, and life was immortal, and he could not 
be wrong who did the will of God. After a 
day of conflict peace came to his soul, and in 
the soft light of the setting sun he rose to go 
home. Kate Carnegie. 



June 27 

MARGET'S was an old-fashioned garden, 
with pinks and daisies and forget-me- 
nots, with sweet-scented wall-flower and thyme 
and moss-roses, where nature had her way, and 
gracious thoughts could visit one without any 
jarring note. As George's voice softened to the 
close, I caught her saying, " His servants shall 
see His face," and the peace of Paradise fell 
upon us in the shadow of death. 

Beside tJie Bonnie Brier Bush. 



June 28 

WHEN the kingdom comes in its greatness, 
it will fulfil every religion and destroy 
none, clearing away the imperfect and opening 
uji reaches of goodness not yet imagined, till it 
has gathered into its bosom whatsoever things 
are true and honest and just and pure and lovely. 
It standeth on the earth as the city of God with 
its gates open by night and by day, into which 
entereth nothing that defileth, but into which is 
brought the glory and power of the nations. 
It is the natural home of the good; as Zvvingli, 
the Swiss reformer, said in his dying confes- 
sion, " Not one good man, one holy spirit, 
one faithful soul, whom you will not then 
behold with God." The Mind of t!ie Master. 



June 29 

YEAR after year some nameless monk, la- 
bours on a rough block in some cathe- 
dral column till it turns into the very likeness 
of Christ. He dies, and they bury him in a 
forgotten grave ; but every morning the light, 
streaming through the eastern vs'indow over the 
head of Christ as from the eyes of the Judge, 
touches with gold that image of the Lord 
wrought by His servant, and as the generations 
pace the aisles beneath, high above them, beau- 
tiful and unchanging, remains the unknown 
worker's memorial. The Cure of Souls. 



June 30 

" A ' LEFT the schule afore she cam, an' the 
l\ first time a' ever kent Marget richt wes 
the day she settled wi' her mither in the cottar's 
hoose on Drumsheugh, an' she 'shed ma hert 
sin' that 'oor. 

" It wesna her winsome face nor her gentle 
ways that drew me, Weelum; it wes . . . her 
soul, the gudeness 'at lookit oot on the warld 
through yon grey een, sae serious, thochtfu', 
kindly. 

" Nae man cud say a rouch word or hae an 
ill thocht in her presence 5 she made ye better 
juist tae hear her speak an' stan' aside her at 
the wark." The Days of Aidd La^ig Syne. 



" T WOULD like to speak to you about the 

X Sacrament ; it was lovely.'" 

" Ye dae me much honour, Miss Carnegie," 
and Marget slightly flushed, " an' much pleas- 
ure, for there is naething dearer tae me than 
keeping the Sacrament j it is my joy every day 
and muckle comfort in life." 

" But I thought you had it only once a 
year } " questioned Kate. 

*' With bread and wine in outward sign that 
is once, and maybe eneuch, for it makes ane 
high day for us all, but div ye not think. Miss 
Carnegie, that all our life should be ane 
Sacrament ? " 

" Tell me," said Kate, looking into Mar- 
get's sweet, spiritual face. 

*' Is it no' the picture of His Luve, who thocht 
o' everybody but Himsel', an' saved everybody 
but Himsel', an' didna He say we maun drink 
His cup and live His life .'' " 

Kate only signed that Marget should go on. 

" Noo a'm judgin' that ilka ane o's is savit 
juist as we are baptised intae the Lord's death, 
and ilka time ane o's keeps back a hot word, 
or humbles a proud heart, or serves anither at 
a cost, we have eaten the Body and drunk the 
Blood o' the Lord." KaU Carnegie. 



July I 

Is not every man conscious of a strange dual- 
ity, so that he seems two men ? There is 
the self who is proud, envious, jealous — a 
lower self. There is the self which is modest, 
generous, ungrudging — • a higher self. Just 
as the lower self is repressed the higher lives j 
just as the lower is pampered the higher dies. 
We are conscious of this conflict and desire that 
the evil self be crushed, mortified, killed ; that 
the better self be liberated, fed, developed. It 
goes without saying that the victory of the evil 
self would be destruction, that the victory of 
the better self would be salvation. 

Tlie Mind of the Master. 



July 2 

WHEN a minister leads his people in the 
return to Christ, it is well for him to 
avoid two extremes. He must neither go to 
the Gospels alone, for there he is dealing with 
an earthly Christ, nor to the heavens alone, for 
then is he dealing with an unknown Christ, but 
to Him Who is alive for evermore, and Whom 
we have in the Gospels, Criticism gives us 
the historical Christ, and mysticism gives us 
the spiritual Christ, and both united give us the 

real Christ. TJie Cure of Souls. 



July 3 

CRITICISM has rendered two great ser- 
vices to the working ministry, and one is 
apologetical. Almost all the moral attacks 
upon the Bible, which may have been cheap, 
but which were very embarrassing, fall to the 
ground as soon as the Bible is seen to be a pro- 
gressive and gradual revelation. 

Criticism has also handed the Bible to the 
working minister re-arranged, re-edited, re- 
bound, and so in this way made it for his pur- 
pose a more intelligible and interesting book. 

The Cure of Sotils. 



July 4 

As each nation suffers, it prospers ; as it 
ceases to suffer, it decays. Our Eng- 
land was begotten in the sore travail of Eliza- 
beth's day. The American nation sprang 
from the sons of martyrs. United Germany 
was baptised in blood. The pioneers of science 
have lived hardly. The most original philoso- 
pher of modern times ground glasses for a liv- 
ing, and was the victim of incurable disease. 
The master poem of English speech was written 
by a blind and forsaken Puritan. The New 
World was found in spite of a hostile court and 
treacherous friends. TJie Mind of the Master. 



Ju^y 5 

OUR average man must not claim the privi- 
lege of vagrant genius; he must wrestle 
and sweat, placing, reviewing, transposing, till 
the way stands fair and open from Alpha to 
Omega — a clean, straight furrow from end to 
end of the field, a chain of single links which 
when put to the test holds. -fhe Cure ofSouh. 

July 6 

THIS was what rose before his eyes, in that 
empty place. Within the drawers were 
kept the Sabbath clothes, and in this room a lad- 
die was dressed for kirk, after a searching and 
remorseless scrubbing in the " but," and here he 
must sit motionless till it was time to start, while 
Mary, giving last touches to the fire and herself, 
maintained a nmning exhortation, " Gin ye brak 
that collar or rumple yir hair, peety ye; the Ml 
be nae peppermint-drap for you in the sermon 
the day." Here also an old woman whose 
hands were hard with work opened a secret 
place in those drawers, and gave a young man 
whose hands were white her last penny. 

"Ye Ml be carefu', Chairlie, an' a '11 try tae 
send ye something till ye can dae for yerseP ; an' , 
laddie, dinna forget ... yir Bible nor yir hame, 
for we expect ye tae be a credit tae 's a'." 

Have mercy, O God ! 

The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



July 7 

WERE earnest men rebelling against ancient 
dogmas because they were an integral 
part of Jesus' teaching, this would be a very seri- 
ous matter. This would be nothing short of a 
deliberate attack on Jesus. If they be only en- 
deavouring to correct the results of theological 
science by the actual teaching of Jesus, then 
surely nothing could be more hopeful. This 
must issue in the revival of Christianity. 

The Mind of the Master. 

Julys 

'*"\/'E think that a 'm asking a great thing 
X when I plead for a pickle notes to give a 
puir laddie a college education. I tell ye, man, 
a'm honourin' ye and givin' ye the fairest chance 
ye '11 ever hae o' winning wealth. Gin ye store 
the money ye hae scrapit by mony a hard bar- 
gain, some heir ye never saw 'ill gar it flee in 
chambering and wantonness. Gin ye hed the 
heart to spend it on a lad o' pairts like Geordie 
Hoo, ye wud hae twa rewards nae man could 
tak frae ye. Ane wud be the honest gratitude 
o' a laddie whose desire for knowledge ye hed 
sateesfied, and the second wud be this — anither 
scholar in the land ; and a ' m thinking with auld 
John Knox that ilka scholar is something added 
to the riches of the commonwealth." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



July 9 

WHAT the ideal pastor sees in every mem- 
ber of his congregation is not some one 
that will be of use to him because he is such a 
good worker, but a soul that is given him for 
twenty years by Christ, and whom he must 
prepare for everlasting life. 77^^ Cttre 0/ Sauls. 

July 10 

WHEN Jesus' idea of Faith is accepted, then 
its province in human life will be finally 
delimitated, and various frontier wars brought 
to an end. Painters will still give us charming 
pictures of Faith and Reason, but they will no 
longer represent Reason as a mailed knight pick- 
ing his way from stone to stone, while Faith as 
a winged angel floats by his side. Faith and 
Reason will be neighbouring powers, each abso- 
lute in its own region. It is the part of Reason 
to verify intellectual conceptions and apply in- 
tellectual principles, and Faith must not disturb 
this work. It is the part of Faith to gather those 
hopes and feelings which lie outside the intellect, 
and Faith must not be hampered by Reason. 
When the knight comes to the edge of the cliff, 
he can go no farther ; then Faith, like Angelico's 
San Michele, opens his strong wings and passes 
out in the lonely quest for God. 

The Mind of the Master. 



July 



1 1 



TAKE one sin that happens to be mine and 
other men's, and let the preacher confine 
himself, say, to pride, and it will be strange if 
he does not arrest and ashame me, but let him 
throw in a dozen other sins and I shall be un- 
moved. My medicine is held in too large a 
solution. A sermon ought to be a monograph 
and not an encyclopaedia, an agency for pushing 
one article, not a general store where one can 
purchase anything from a button to a coffin. 

The Cure of Souls. 



July 12 

DOCTOR DAVIDSON prayed: 
"Heavenly Father, who only art the 
source of love and the giver of every good gift, 
we thank Thee for the love wherewith the soul 
of Thy servant clave unto this woman as Jacob 
unto Rachel, which many years have not 
quenched. Remember the faithfulness of this 
true heart, and disappoint not its expectation. 
May the tryst that was broken on earth be kept 
in heaven, and be pleased to give Thy . . . 
give Jamie a good home-coming. Amen." 

"Thank ye, doctor; ye' ve said what I wantit, 
an' ... it wes kind o' ye tae pit in < Jamie,' " 
and his hand came out from the bed for a last 
grasp. The Days of A uld Lang- Syne. 



July 13 

PHILOSOPHY has been, for the most pait, 
distinguished by its strenuous treatment of 
the moral problem, but has been visibly ham- 
pered by circumstances, being in the position of 
a Court which cannot go into the whole case. 
Sin may be only a defect, then philosophy can 
cope with the position ; but it is at least possible 
that sin may be a collision with the will of God, 
then philosophy can afford no help. Spiritual 
affairs are beyond its jurisdiction; they belong 
to the department of Religion. Within the 
range of philosophy the Race has not gone as- 
tray — it has simply not arrived : humanity is not 
diseased — it is only poorly developed. 

TAe Mind of tlie Master. 

July 14 

WHEN Jesus proposes to sum up the whole 
duty of man in Love, one is instantly 
charmed with the sentiment, and understands 
how it made the arid legalism of the scribes to 
blossom like the rose. How can one conquer 
sin ? How can one come to perfection ? How 
can one have fellowship with God ? How can 
one save the world ? And to a hundred ques- 
tions of this kind Jesus has one answer : " Love 
the man next you." It is the poetry of ideal- 
ism ; it is quite beyond criticism as a counsel of 
perfection. The Mind of the Master. 



Wy 15 

WHEN the doctor placed the precious bag 
beside Sir George in our solitary first 
next morning, he laid a cheque beside it and 
was about to leave. 

" No, no," said the great man. " Mrs. 
Macfadyen and I were on the gossip last night, 
and I know the whole story about you and 
your friend. 

" You have some right to call me a coward, 
but I Ml never let you count me a mean, miserly 
rascal," and the cheque with Drumsheugh's 
painful writing fell in fifty pieces on the floor. 

As the train began to move, a voice from 
the first called so that all in the station heard. 

*' Give 's another shake of your hand, Mac- 
Lure; I 'm proud to have met you; you are an 
honour to our profession. Mind the antiseptic 
dressings. ' ' The Days of A uld Lang Syne. 

July 16 

AH, the kindly jests that have not come off 
in life, the gracious deeds that never were 
done, the reparations that were too late! 

Kate Carnegie. 

THERE was a day when the preacher could 
break out in terrifying language on his 
hearers for sleeping, inattention, and such like 
faults. People are too intelligent and well-bred 
now to commit such breaches of good taste: 
they sleep at home. The Cure 0/ Souls. 



JuJy 17 

As the light of the sun colours the tiniest 
blade of grass, so the idea in the back- 
ground of the mind tinges every detail of life. 
We grant that a man's theology will be built on 
his belief, and will follow its lines to the high- 
est pinnacle. This is a grudging concession, a 
limited analysis. The whole energy of a human 
life, however it may have been fed on the way, 
and whatever common wheels it may turn, 
arises from the spring among the hills. Belief 
gives the trend to politics, constitutes the rule 
of business, composes the atmosphere of home, 
and creates the horizon of the soul. It becomes 
the sovereign arbiter of our destinies, for char- 
acter itself is the precipitate of belief. 

Tlie Mind of the Master. 

July 18 

<' \/E asked me : 

X " ' Am I a giiid mother tae ye ?' and 
when I could dae naethin' but hold, ye said, 
* Be sure God maun be a hantle kinder.' 

" The truth came to me as witli a flicker, and 
I cuddled down into my bed, and fell asleep in 
His love as in my mother's arms. 

" Mither," and George lifted up his head, 
" that was my conversion, and, mither dear, I 
hae longed a' thro' thae college studies for the 
day when ma mooth wud be opened wi' this 
evangel . ' ' Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



July 19 

"\/E'RE tae liae the Doctor at laist," 
X Mains said to Netherton — letting the 
luck-penny on a transaction in seed-corn stand 
over — "an' a'm jidgin' the time's no' been 
lost. He's plainer an' easier tae follow then 
he wes at the affgo. Ma word " — contemplat- 
ing the exercise before the Glen — " but ye '11 
aye get eneuch here and there tae cairry hame." 
— Which shows what a man the Rabbi was, 
that on the strength of his possession a parish 
like Kilbogie could speak after this fashion to 
Drumtochty. 

^ He'll hae a fair trial, Mains" — Nether- 
ton' stone was distinctly severe — "an' mony a 
trial he 's hed in his day, they say : wes 't three- 
an' -twenty kirks he preached in afore ye took 
him ? But mind ye, length 's nae standard in 
Drumtochty; na, na, it's no' hoo muckle wind 
a man hes, but what like is the stuff that comes. 
It 's bushels doon bye, but it 's wecht up bye." 

Kate Carnegie. 

July 20 

THE Bible as it comes from the critics is 
more real, because it is more human ; not 
a book dropped down from heaven, untouched 
with a feeling of our infirmities, but a book 
wrought out through the struggles, hopes, trials, 
victories of the soul of man in his quest after 
God. TJie Cure of Souls. 



July 21 

IN various places and on many occasions does 
Jesus pledge us to meet Him in this life — 
at the Cross, in the Sacrament, in the crises of 
joy and sorrow — -and now once again He 
appoints us a meeting-place. It is the Valley of 
the Shadow, where, in the quietness and seclu- 
sion as in a lover's glade. He will expect us one 
day. Is there any spot on earth so common or 
so wild that it has not been transformed by 
love ? Are there any places in our thought so 
beautiful as those where we kept tryst with those 
that were dearer than life ? So Jesus, who hath 
such power of regeneration that He changed 
the accursed tree into the Cross, and made 
chief sinners into saints, hath put a fair face on 
death so that it becometh but His dark disguise 
as He returneth to receive us home. 

jfc^ Tlie Upper Room. 

July 22 
T ESUS wrote nothing, He said little, but He 
_/ did what He said and made others do as 
He commanded. His religion began at once to 
exist ; from the beginning it was a life. It is the 
distinction of Christianity that it goes. This is 
why some of us, in spite of every intellectual 
difficulty, must believe Jesus to be the Son of 
God — He has done what no other ever did, and 
what only God could do. He is God because 
He discharges a " God-function." 

The Mind of the Master. 



July 23 

NEW tliought is almost sure to be crude 
and yeasty, and therefore wis^e and char- 
itable deliverances can hardly be expected of 
young preachers, because their thought has not 
yet had time to ripen. , It is enough if it be 
strong and rich ; fineness and fragrance will 
come with age. T/te Cure 0/ Souls. 



July 24 

LITERATURE oscillates betweenextremes, 
and affords an instructive contradiction. 
As the record of human experience it must 
chronicle sin ; as the solace of the individual, 
it makes a brave effort to ignore sin. You 
hear the moan of this calamity through all the 
work of Sophocles, but Aristophane" persuades 
you that this is the gayest of worlds, and both 
voices were heard in the same theatre beneath 
the shadow of enthroned Wisdom. Juvenal's 
mordant satire lays bare the ulcerous Roman 
life, but Catullus flings a wreath of roses over 
it, and they were both poets of the classical 
age. A French novelist, with an unholy mas- 
tery of his craft, steeps us in the horrors of a 
decadent society. A French critic, with the 
airiest grace, exclaims: " Sin, I have abolished 
it- ' ' The Mind oftlw Master. 



JuJy ^5 

TEXTS I can never remember, nor, for that 
matter, the words of sermons; but the 
subject was Jesus Christ, and before he had 
spoken five minutes I was convinced, who am 
outside dogmas and churches, tiiat Christ was 
present. The preacher faded from before one's 
eyes, and there rose the figure of the Nazarene, 
best lover of every human soul, with a face of 
tender patience such as Sarto gave the Master 
in the Church of the Annunziata, and stretch- 
ing out His hands to old folk, and little children 
as He did, "before His death, in Galilee. His 
voice might be heard any moment, as I have 
imagined it in my lonely hours by the winter 
fire or on the solitary hills — soft, low, and 
sweet, penetrating like music to the secret of 
the heart, " Come unto Me . . . and I will 
give you rest." Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 

July 26 

No one can ignore this constant and radiant 
sense of the Divine Fatherhood in the 
life of Jesus. It must be a suggestive fact to 
an unbeliever, for it will be admitted on every 
hand that Jesus knew more about Religion than 
any man that has ever lived. It ought to be an 
absolute conclusion to a believer, since he holds 
that Jesus is Himself Very God of Very God. 
The Mind of the Master. 



July 27 

"' A ' KEN a'm deein'',' a' said, 'an' a'm 
/x no' feared, but a' canna thole the 
thocht o' slippin' awa in an hospital ; it wud hae 
been different at hanie.' 

" ' Ye '11 no' want a hame here, Lily' : it wes 
braid Scotch noo, an' it never soonded sae 
sweet j an', Jamie " — here the whisper was so 
low, Jamie had to bend his head — " a' saw the 
tears in his een." 

"Rest a wee, Lily 5 a'm followin'. Sae he 
took ye tae his ain hoose an' pit ye in the best 
room, an' they 've waitit on ye as if ye were his 
ain dochter. . . . Ye dinna need tae speak ; 
a' wudna say but Sir Andra micht be a Chris- 
tian o' the auld kind — a' mean, ' I was a 
stranger, and ye took Me in.' " 

The Days of A^dd Lang Syne. 

July 28 

ONE reason why many masterly sermons fail 
is that they have never had the benefit of 
this process ; therefore they are clear, interest- 
ing, eloquent, but helpless. They do not make 
way, and lay hold of hearers, because they have 
never conquered the speaker. He has not been 
horrified at this sin, has not felt this trial, has 
not seen this Christ during the week through 
the sympathy of the soul. The aire 0/ Souls. 



July 29 

How was the kingdom to impress itself 
upon the world and change the colour 
of human life ? As Jesus did Himself, and after 
no other fashion. Of all conquerors He has 
had the highest ambition, and above them all 
He has seen His desire. He has dared to de- 
mand men's hearts as well as their lives and has 
won them — how .■' By coercion ? by strata- 
gem .'' by cleverness ? by splendour ? By none 
of those means that have been used by rulers, 
— by the Cross. The Cross meant the last de- 
votion to humanity ; it was the pledge of the 
most uncomplaining and effectual ministry. 
When you inquire the resources of the Kingdom 
of Heaven, behold the Cross. They are faith 
and love. Its soldiers are the humble, the meek, 
the gentle, the peaceful. rAe Mind ofilie Master. 

July 30 

IT was a low-roofed room, with a box bed 
and some pieces of humble furniture, fit only 
for a labouring man. But the choice treasures 
of Greece and Rome lay on the table, and on a 
shelf beside the bed College prizes and medals, 
while everywhere were the roses he loved. His 
peasant mother stood beside the body of her 
scholar son, whose hopes and thoughts she had 
shared, and through the window came the bleat- 
ing of distant sheep. It was the idyll of Scottish 
University life. Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 




No one sent for MacLure save in great 
straits, and the sight of him put courage 
in sinking hearts. But this was not by the grace 
of his appearance, or the advantage of a good 
bedside manner. A tall, gaunt, loosely made 
man, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on 
his body, his face burned a dark brick colour 
by constant exposure to the weather, red hair 
and beard turning grey, honest blue eyes that 
looked you ever in tlie face, huge hands with 
wrist bones like the shank of a ham, and a voice 
that hurled his salutations across two fields, he 
suggested the moor rather than the drawing- 
room. But what a clever hand it was in an 
operation, as delicate as a woman's, and what 
a kindly voice it was in the humble room where 
the shepherd's wife was weeping by her man's 
bedside. Beside the Botinie Brier Biish. 




A DISPLENISHING SALE 

DRUMTOCHTY, hoeing the turnips for 
the second time on a glorious day in 
early August, saw the Kildrummie auctioneer 
go up the left side of the Glen and down the 
right like one charged with high affairs. It was 
understood that Jock Constable could ride any- 
thing in the shape of a horse, and that after- 
noon he had got ten miles an hour out of an 
animal which had been down times without 
number, and whose roaring could be heard 
from afar. Jock was in such haste that he 
only smacked his lips as he passed our public- 
house, and waved his hand when Hillocks 
shouted, " Hoo 's a' wi' ye?" from a neigh- 
bouring field. But he dismounted whenever 
he saw a shapely gate-post, and spent five min- 
utes at the outer precincts of the two churches. 
Tlie Days of Atdd Lang Syne. 



August I 

THERE are churches which depreciate the 
service, and churches which depreciate the 
sermon, and both err, because sermon and ser- 
vice are not rivals but auxiliaries, the service 
spiritualising and softening the heart for the mes- 
sage of God, and the Evangel being the answer 
to the praise and prayer. n, Cure o/Souh. 

August 1 

TOWNSPEOPLE are so clever, and know 
so much, that it is only just something 
should be hidden from their sight, and it is quite 
certain that they do not understand the irresisti- 
ble and endless fascination of the country. They 
love to visit us in early autumn, and are vastly 
charmed with the honeysuckle in the hedges, 
and the corn turning yellow, and the rivers sing- 
ing in the sunlight, and the purple on the hill- 
side. It is then that the dweller in cities resolves 
to retire, as soon as may be, from dust and 
crowds and turmoil and hurry, to some cottage 
where the scent of roses comes in at the open 
window, and one is wakened of a morning by 
the birds singing in the ivy. When the corn is 
gathered into the stack-yard, and the leaves fall 
on the road, and the air has a touch of frost, and 
the evenings draw in, then the townsman begins 
to shiver and bethink him of his home. 

Kate Carnegie. 



August 3 

JEWISH piety has laid the world under a 
hopeless debt by imagining the austere holi- 
ness of God, and has doubled the obligation by 
adding His tenderness. It was an achievement 
to carve the white marble; a greater to make it 
live and glow. The saints of Israel touched 
their highest when they infused the idea of the 
Divine spirituality with passion, and brought it 
to pass that the Holy One of Israel is the kind- 
est deity that has ever entered the heart of man. 
There was no human emotion they did not as- 
sign to God ; no relationship they did not use as 
the illustration of His love ; no appeal of affec- 
tion they did not place in His lips ; no sorrow 
of which they did not make Him partaker. 

The Mind of the Master. 

August 4 

MARGET lifted Plato, and it seemed to 
me that day as if the dignity of our 
Lady of Sorrows had fallen upon her. 

"This is the buik George chose for you, 
Maister Maclean, for he aye said to me ye hed 
been a prophet and shown him mony deep 
things." 

The tears sprang to the Celt's eyes. 

" It wass like him to make all other men bet- 
ter than himself," with the soft, sad Highland 
accent 5 " and a proud woman you are to hef 
been his mother." Beside the Bonnie Brier Buik. 



August 5 

ONE has heard able and pious sermons which 
might as well have been preached in Mars, 
for any relation they had to our life and environ- 
ment. They suggested the address a disem- 
bodied spirit might give to his brethren in the 
intermediate state, where it is alleged we shall 
exist without physical correspondence. This 
detached sermon is the only credible evidence 
for such an imimaginable state, but otherwise it 
does not appear effective. The Cure of Souls. 



August 6 

JESUS has changed ethics from a crystal that 
can only grow by accretion into a living 
plant that flowers in its season. He exposed the 
negative principle of morals in His empty house 
swept and garnished ; He vindicated the positive 
principle In His house held by a strong man 
armed. The individualism of selfishness is the 
disintegrating force which has cursed this world, 
segregating the Individual and rending society to 
pieces. The altruism of Love is the consolidat- 
ing force which will save the world, reconciling 
every man to his fellows and recreating society. 
When Jesus makes Love the basis of social life. 
He does not need to condescend to details 5 He 
has established unity. The Mind o/the Master. 



August 7 

IF God give us success, then to the feet of 
Jesus let our sheaves be carried ; if it be His 
will we should fail, to the same dear Lord let us 
flee. Who knows what it is to see His life fall 
into the ground and disappear. From His life 
let us learn to preach ; from His example let 
us learn to serve ; in His communion let us find 
our strength, comfort, peace. Whom not hav- 
ing seen we love, to Whom we shall one day 
render our account. xke Cure of Souls. 



August 8 

THE Doctor gave the cup to the General, 
who passed it to Kate, and from her it 
went to Weelum MacLure, and another cup he 
gave to Hay, whom he had known from a child, 
and he handed it to Marget Howe, and she to 
Whinnie, her man ; and so the two cups passed 
down from husband to wife, from wife to daugh- 
ter, from daughter to servant, from lord to ten- 
ant, till all had shown forth the Lord's death 
in common fellowship and love as becometh 
Christian folk. In the solemn silence the sun- 
shine fell on the faces of the communicants, and 
the singing of the birds came in through the 
open door with the scent of flowers and ripe 
corn. Kate Carnegie. 



August 9 

IT follows upon Jesus' suggestion of the next 
life, — the continuation of the present on a 
higher level, — that it will be itself a continual 
progress, and Jesus gives us frequent hints of this 
law. When He referred to the many mansions 
in His Father's house. He may have been in- 
tending rooms — places where those who had 
been associated together on earth may be gath- 
ered together; but He may be rather intending 
stations — stages in that long ascent of life that 
shall extend through the ages of ages. 

The Mind of the Master. 

August lo 

So they sat down together beside the brier 
bush, and after one glance at Marget's face 
the minister opened his heart, and told her the 
great controversy with Lachlan. 

Marget lifted her head as one who had heard 
of some brave deed, and there was a ring in 
her voice. 

" It maks me prood before God that there 
are twa men in Drumtochty who follow their 
conscience as king, and coont truth dearer than 
their ain freends. It's peetifu' when God's 
bairns fecht through greed and envy, but it's 
hertsome when they are wullin' tae wrestle aboot 
the Evangel, for surely the end o' it a' maun 
be peace. Beside tJie Bonnie Brier Bush. 



August 1 1 

WHAT we have chiefly to learn for the 
work of the Holy Ministry, in our day, 
is not how to criticise, nor how to read, nor 
how to speak, nor how to organise, but how to 
meditate, in order that present-day sermons may 
add to their brightness and interest the greater 
qualities of the past, depth of experience, and 
an atmosphere of peace. j-^ Cure o/Souh. 

August 12 

SUDDENLY they came out from the shade 
into a narrow lane of light, where some one 
of the former time, with an eye and a soul, had 
cleared a passage among the trees, so that one 
standing at the inner end and looking outwards 
could see the whole Glen, while the outstretched 
branches of the beeches shaded his eyes. Morn- 
ing in the summer-time about five o'clock was 
a favourable hour, because one might see the last 
mists lift and the sun light up the face of Ben 
Urtach ; and evening-tide was better, because 
the Glen showed wonderfully tender in the soft 
light, and the Grampians were covered with 
glory. But it was best to take your first view to- 
wards noon, for then you could trace the Tochty 
upwards as it appeared and reappeared, till it 
was lost in woods at the foot of Glen Urtach, 
with every spot of interest on either side. 

Kate Carnegie. 



August 13 

*' T T IS hert wes juist ower big, that wes the 
xJL maitter wi' Jamie, an' he hoddit [hid] 
his feelings for fear o' makin' a fule o' himsel' 
afore the pairish. 

" Sail, he wesna verra parteeklar what he said 
gin ye hed him in a corner. He nursit the bit 
lassie that lived wi' Mary Robertson for a hale 
day when she wes deein' o' dipthery, an' threipit 
tae me that he hed juist gien a cry in passin' 5 an' 
when Lily Grant dee'd in London, he gied oot 
that her mistress hed paid for bringin' the corpse 
tae Drumtochty kirkyaird. He cud lee neat as 
weel as Milton, but it wes aye tae cover his ain 
gudeness. 

"A' coontit Weelum MacLure an' Jamie 
Soutar the warmest hertsin the Glen, an' Jamie's 
never been the same sin' . . . we lost Weelum. 
The kirkyaird 's no' worth comin' tae noo that 
Jamie 's awa." The Days of Auld Latig Syne. 

August 14 

ONE may also view with apprehension the 
habit of popularising theology to the point 
of vulgarity, and wince when the resurrection 
of our Lord is discussed in drawing-rooms, and 
the miraculous decided between the soup and the 
fish. This is from the cloister to the market- 
place with a vengeance, and thoughtful people 
must have anxieties. Tfie Cure of Souls. 



August 15 

MOMENTS there are when the sailors of 
the deep envy those that sail in the 
smooth sheltered waters because they have not 
been driven to and fro on stomiy seas and been 
in danger of the jagged rocks. Other moments, 
the sons of tribulation pity those unfortunates 
who have never seen the great billows lie down 
as a dog chidden by his master and God turn 
the storm into ^. calm. One half of the Bible is 
a closed book to them that sit at ease, because 
only a pierced hand can open the pages. 

W The U^per Rootn. 

August 16 

" 1\/T^ DEAR LASSIE, — Ye ken that I 
iVJL wes aye yir freend, and I am writing 
this tae say that yir father luves ye mair than 
ever, and is wearing oot his hert for the sicht o' 
yir face. Come back, or he '11 dee thro' want 
o' his bairn. The glen is bright and bonny noo, 
for the purple heather is on the hills, and doon 
below the gowden corn, wi' bluebell and poppy 
flowers between. Naebody 'ill ask ye where 
ye 've been, or onything else; there's no a 
bairn in the place that's no wearying tae see 
ye ; and, Flora, lassie, if there will be sic gled- 
ness in oor wee glen when ye come hame, what 
think ye o' the joy in the Father's Hoose } 
Start the verra meenit that ye get this letter; 
yir father bids ye come, and I 'm writing this 
in place o' yir mother. Marget Howe." 

Beside iJte Bonnie Brier Busk. 



August 17 

HE stands before his people now in the 
supreme moment of his life, and a sense 
of the solemnity of his duty overcomes him, so 
that they see him hesitate between the text and 
the sermon. Let them pray with one accord 
that upon this frail brother man, on whom God 
has laid such a work, the Holy Ghost may 
descend, and the same Spirit make tender their 
hearts within them. riie Cure ofSouh. 



August 18 

" A 'M expeckin' tae hear John's on the 
t\. mend masel'," said David, manfully, 
and he set himself to fortify his wife with 
Saunders's case and the doctor's prayer, till she 
lifted her head again and watched. 

A summer wind passed over the pines, the 
wood-pigeons cooed above their heads, rabbits 
ran out and in beside them, the burn below 
made a pleasant sound, and a sense of the 
Divine Love descended on their hearts. 

" The Almichty," whispered Meg, " 'ill 
surely no' tak awa oor only bairn . . . an' him 
dune sae weel . . . an' sae gude a son . . . 
A' wes coontin' on him comin' hame next 
year . . . an' seein' him aince mair . . . afore 
a deed. The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



August 19 

WHEN one passes from the Gospels to the 
Psalms he is struck by the absence of 
Father. When one returns he is struck by its 
presence. The Psalmist never said the word ; 
Jesus never said anything else. With Jesus, 
God and Father were identical. Fatherhood 
was not a side of Deity ; it was the centre. 
God might be a King and Judge ; He was first 
of all, and last of all, and through all. Father. 
In Fatherhood every other relation of God must 
be harmonised and find its sphere. Short of 
His Fatherhood you cannot stop in the ascent 
of God. Under Fatherhood is gathered every 
other revelation. -jlu Mind o/ihe Master. 

August 20 

BENEATH the honeysuckle at his garden 
gate a woman was waiting. 
" My name is Marget Howe, and I 'm the 
wife of William Howe of Wliinnie Knowe. 
My only son wes preparin' for the ministry, 
but God wanted him nearly a year syne. When 
ye preached the Evangel o' Jesus the day I 
heard his voice, and I loved you. Ye hev nae 
mither on earth, I hear, and I hae nae son, and 
I wantit tae say that if ye ever wish tae speak 
to ony woman as ye wud tae yir mither, come 
tae Whinnie Knowe, an' I'll coont it ane of 
the Lord's consolations." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



August 21 

'"r'HEY stood in silence to receive the bless- 
JL ing of the place ; for surely never is the 
soul so open to the voice of nature as by the 
side of running water and in the heart of a wood. 
The fretted sunlight made shifting figures of 
brightness on the ground ; above, the innumer- 
able leaves rustled and whispered; a squirrel 
darted a\ong a branch and watched the intru- 
ders with bright, curious eyes ; the rooks cawed 
from the distance ; the pigeons cooed in sweet, 
sad cadence close at hand. They sat down on 
the bare roots at their feet and yielded them- 
selves to the genius of the forest — the god who 
will receive the heart torn and distracted by the 
fierce haste and unfinislied labours and vain am- 
bitions of life, and will lay its fever to rest and 
encompass it with the quietness of eternity. 

Kate Carnegie. 

August 22 

WHAT is wanted above everything to-day 
is positive preaching, by men who be- 
lieve with all their mind and heart in Jesus 
Christ. If a man has any doubt about Christ 
he must on no account be His minister ; and if 
one in the ministry be afflicted from time to time 
by failures of faith, let him consume his own 
smoke and keep a brave face in the pulpit. 

The Cure of Souls. 



August 23 

WHEN Jesus judges by type, our Christ 
approximation, or our Christ aliena- 
tion, one is struck by His absolute fairness. 
We are estimated not by what we have done 
but by what we desire to be. With Jesus the 
purpose of the soul is as the soul's achieve- 
ment, and He will not be disappointed. If one 
surrender himself to Jesus, and is crucified on 
His cross, there is no sin he will not overcome, 
no service he will not render, no virtue to which 
he will not attain. He has made a good be- 
ginning, he has a long time. If one refuse the 
appeal of Jesus, and cling to his lower self, there 
is no degradation to which he may not descend. 
He has made a bad beginning, and he also has 
a long time. Both have eternity. 

The Mind 0/ the Master. 

August 24 

WHEN Jean was comforted Burnbrae 
gathered his household together in the 
kitchen, and he chose the portion from the 
tenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel — 

" Whosoever therefore shall confess Me be- 
fore men, him will I confess also before My 
Father which is in heaven." 

As Burnbrae read the last words he lifted up 
his head, and it seemed even unto the serving- 
girls as if he had received a crown. 

T/ie Days of A uld Latig; Sytte. 



August 25 

" T T wass a beautiful night in London, but 
X I will be thinking that there iss no living 
person caring whether I die or live, and I wass 
considering how I could die, for there is noth- 
ing so hopeless as to hef no friend in a great city. 
It iss often that I hef been alone on the moor, 
and no man within miles, but I wass never 
lonely, oh no, I had plenty of good company. 
I would sit down beside a burn, and the trout 
will swim out from below a stone, and the 
cattle will come to drink, and the muirfowl will 
be crying to each other, and the sheep will be 
bleating, oh yes, and there are the bees all 
round, and a string of wild ducks above your 
head. It iss a busy place a moor, and a safe 
place too, for there is not one of the animals will 
hurt you. No, the big highlanders will only 
look at you and go away to their pasture." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 

August 26 

LUCIDITY is never to be confounded with 
simplicity: the former is a quality of 
style, the latter of thought, and it sometimes 
happens that what is childish in idea may be 
unintelligible in expression, while what is pro- 
found in idea may be plain to a child. 

The Cure of Souls. 



August 27 

THERE are three steps in the Santa Scala 
which the Race is slowly and painfully 
ascending; barbarism where men cultivate the 
body, civilisation where they cultivate the in- 
tellect, holiness where they cultivate the soul. 
There is for the whole Race, for each nation, 
for every individual, the age of Homer, the age 
of Socrates, the age of Jesus. Beyond the age 
of Jesus nothing can be desired or imagined, for 
it runs on those lofty table-lands where the 
soul lives with God. The Mind 0/ tlie Master. 

August 28 

" "XT TELL, Burnbrae, I never thought you 
V V would have left me for a matter of 
kirks. Could you not have stretched a point 
for auld lang syne ? " and Kilspindie looked 
hard at the old man. 

" Ma Lord, there's naething a' wudna hae 
dune to stay in Burnbrae but this ae thing. Ye 
hae been a gude landlord tae me, as the auld Earl 
wes tae ma father, an' it 'ill never be the same tae 
me again on anither estate ; but ye maunna ask 
me tae gang back on ma conscience." The 
tears came to Burnbrae's eyes, and he rose to 
his feet. "A' thocht," he said, <'when yir 
message cam, that maybe ye hed anither mind 
than yir factor, and wud send me back tae Jean 
wi' guid news in ma mooth." 

The Days of A uld Laiig; Syne. 



August 29 

ONE can hardly imagine a greater sin against 
light within the Church than any inJifter- 
ence or enmity towards theology, or a more 
flagrant outrage against the idea of a University 
than the omission or exclusion of one science 
alone, and that the queen of all, and the one 
in which all others cohere and are crowned. 

The Cure of Souls. 

August 1^0 

JESUS did not affect such humility, nor make 
such admissions. He did not obliterate or 
minimise Himself ; He emphasised and asserted 
Himself. " Ye have heard that it hath been 
said by them of old time," opens one paragraph 
after another of Jesus' great sermon, and then 
follows, " But I say unto you." Jesus brushes 
aside the ancients as if they had never been. 
His disciples were not to own any authority 
beside Him ; He was to be absolute, with 
Apostles and Prophets as His witnesses and in- 
terpreters, never His equals. His words are 
ushered in with the solemn formula, " Verily, 
verily ; " they fall on the inner ear like the 
stroke of a bell; they are independent of argu- 
ment. It is ever " I," and one's soul answers 
with reverence. For this " I " that sounds from 
every sentence of the teaching of Jesus is not ego- 
tism j it is Deity. The Mind of the Blaster. 



August 3 1 

IT was the liour before daybreak, and Driim- 
sheugh wandered through fields he had trod- 
den since childhood. The cattle lay sleeping 
in the pastures : their shadowy forms, with a 
patch of whiteness here and there, having a weird 
suggestion of death. He heard the burn run- 
ning over the stones; fifty years ago he had 
made a dam that lasted till winter. The 
hooting of an owl made hiin start; one had 
frightened him as a boy so that he ran home to 
his mother — she died thirty years ago. The 
smell of ripe corn filled the air; it would soon 
be cut and garnered. He could see the dim 
outlines of his house, all dark and cold ; no one 
he loved was beneath the roof. The lighted 
window in Saunders' cottage told where a man 
hung between life and death, but love was in 
that home. The futility of life arose before 
this lonely man, and overcame his heart with 
an indescribable sadness. What a vanity was 
all human labour, what a mystery all human 
*"^ • Beside tlie Bonnie Brier Bush, 



September 



No one can desire a sweeter walk than 
through a Scottish pine wood in late 
September, where you breathe the healing resin- 
ous air, and the ground is crisp and springy 
beneath your feet, and gentle animals dart 
away on every side, and here and there you 
come on an open space with a pool, and a 
brake of gorse. Many a time on market days 
Flora had gone singing through these woods, 
plucking a posy of wild flowers and finding a 
mirror in every pool, as young girls will; but 
now she trembled and was afraid. The rust- 
ling of the trees in the darkness, the hooting of 
an owl, the awful purity of the moonlight in 
the glades, the cold sheen of the water, were to 
her troubled conscience omens of judgment. 
Had it not been for the kindness of Peter 
Bruce, which was a pledge of human forgive- 
ness, there would have been no heart in her to 
dare that wood, and it was with a sob of relief 
she escaped from the shadow and looked upon 
the old glen once more, bathed from end to 
end in the light of the harvest moon. 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



September i 

ALAS ! his wife goes ofF guard, and a pic- 
turesque foreigner from the East takes 
possession of the study. The minister, courte- 
ous as one ought to be to distant strangers, lays 
himself out to extricate the visitor's meaning, 
and after an hour's patient exploration discovers 
that his caller comes from an unknown place, 
that he represents himself, that he wishes to build 
something, that he is determined to preach in 
the minister's church to-morrow for a collection. 

The Cure of Souls. 

September i 

" '"X T 7UD ye like me tae read something?' 

VV begins Milton again. * A'vea fine 

tract here, '• A Sandy Foundation ; " it 's verra 

searchin' an' rousin',' an' he pits on his glesses. 

" < Thank ye,' says Jamie, ' but thae tracts 
are ower deep for a simple man like masel'; 
the Bible dis for me graund. A 've a favourite 
passage; noo, if ye didna mind readin' 't, it 
wud be a comfort. 

" ' Turn tae the 23rd o' Matthew, an' it 'ill 
dae fine gin ye begin at the i 3 th verse, "Woe 
unto ye, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," ' 
an' as sure as a'm lookin' at ye, Drumsheugh, 
Jamie gar'd Milton feenish the chapter, an' ilka 
time heepocrites wud come he wud say tae him- 
sel', ' Maist comfortin',' till a' hed tae gae 
OOtside." The Days of A uld Lang: Syne. 



September 3 

" L ORGIVE your enemies," said Jesus; 
X " help the miserable, restore the fallen, 
set the captive free. Love as I have loved, 
and you will succeed." Amazing simplicity ! 
amazing originality ! Hitherto kingdoms had 
stood on the principle of selfishness — grasp and 
keep. This kingdom was to rest on sacrifice 
— suffer and serve. Amazing hope, that any- 
thing so weak, so helpless, could regenerate the 
masterful world ! But Jesus has not been put 
to shame : His plan has not failed. There are 
many empires on the face of the earth to-day, 
but none so dominant as the kingdom of God. 
T/ie Mind of the Master. 

September 4 

A TURN of the path brought her within 
sight of the cottage, and her heart came 
into her mouth, for the kitchen window was a 
blaze of light. One moment she feared Lachlan 
might be ill, but in the next she understood, and 
in the greatness of her joy she ran the rest of the 
way. When she reached the door, her strength 
had departed, and she was not able to knock. 
But there was no need, for the dogs, who never 
forget nor cast off, were bidding her welcome 
with short joyous yelps of delight, and she could 
hear her father feeling for the latch, which for 
once could not be found, and saying nothing 
but " Flora, Flora." Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



September 5 



WHEN the new Free Kirk minister was 
settled in Drumtochty, Jamie told him 
the story on the road one day and put him to 
the test. 

"What think ye, sir, becam o' Posty on 
the ither side?" and Jamie fixed his eyes on 
Carmichael. 

The minister's face grew still whiter. 

"Did you ever read what shall be done to 
any man that hurts one of God's bairns } " 

"Fine," answered Jamie, with relish, "a 
millstane aboot his neck, an' intae the depths 
o' the sea." 

"Then, it seems to me that it must be well 
with Posty, who went into the depths and 
brought a bairn up at the cost of his life," — 
and Carmichael added softly, " whose angel 
doth continually behold the face of the Father." 

T/ie Days of A uld Lang Sytie. 

September 6 

THERE is a sense in which preaching must 
be the same in all ages, dealing as it does 
with the everlasting Evangel of the Divine Love. 
There is a sense in which preaching must differ 
with every age, addressed as it ought to be to 
the changing conditions of life and thought. 
Christ is not one, but many ; and therein He 
has proved Himself the Son of Man and the 
Saviour of the world. The Cure of Souls. 



September 7 

'T'^HE manse garden lies toward the west, and 
J. as the minister paced its little square of 
turf, sheltered by fir hedges, the sun was going 
down behind the Grampians. Black massy 
clouds had begun to gather in the evening, and 
threatened to obscure the sunset, which was the 
finest sight a Drumtochty man was ever likely 
to see, and a means of grace to every sensible 
heart in the glen. But the sun had beat back 
the clouds on either side, and shot them through 
with glory, and now between piled billows of 
light he went along a shining pathway into the 
Gates of the West. Beside the Bonnie Brier Busk. 

September 8 

WHEN a prophet's inner vision had been 
cleansed by the last agony of pain, he 
dares to describe the Eternal as a fond mother 
who holds Ephraim by the hands, teaching him 
to go ; who is outraged by his sin, and yet 
cannot bear that Israel should perish : as a 
Husband who has offered a rejected love, and 
still pleads ; who is stained by a wife's unfaith- 
fulness, and pursues an adulteress with entreaties. 
One cannot lay his hand on the body of pro- 
phetical Scripture without feeling the beat of 
the Divine heart : one can detect in its most dis- 
tant member the warmth of the Divine love. 

T/ie Mind of the Master. 



September 9 

IT is not the man who selects the text — that 
is not the inwardness of the tact — it is the 
text which selects the man. As the minister was 
busy with study, or as he sat by the bedside of 
the sick, or as he walked the crowded street, or 
as he wandered over the purple heather, or — 
such things have happened, the grace of God 
being sovereign — as he endured in a Church 
Court, the truth, clad in a text, which is the 
more or less perfect dress of the Spirit, suddenly 
appeared and claimed his acquaintance. 

Tfie Cure of Souls, 

September 10 

*' "\ T A, na, Burnbrae, we 're no' tae lose ye 

i. > yet } ye '11 hae yir kirk and yir fairm 
in spite o' a' the factors in Perthshire, but a 'm 
expeckin' a fecht." 

*' Thank ye, Drumsheugh, thank ye kindly ; 
and wuU ye tell Doctor Davidson that he hesna 
lived forty years in the Glen for naethin' ? 

" We said this mornin' that he wud scorn 
tae fill his kirk with renegades, and sae wud ye 
a', but a' wesna prepared for sic feelin'. 

" There 's ae thing maks me prood o' the 
Glen : nae man, Auld or Free, hes bidden me 
pit ma fairm afore ma kirk, but a' body expecks 
me tae obey ma conscience." 

Tlie Days of A uld Lang Syne. 



September 1 1 

''"r*HE principle of vicarious sacrifice, for in- 
-L stance — that one person should get good 
from another's sufferings, — maybe proved to 
be true by texts of Holy Scripture, and it may 
also be shown to be absurd by argument, but 
it may be placed beyond criticism by reference 
to a mother, through whose sufferings and self- 
denial the child lives and comes to strength. 

The Cure of Sotih. 

September \i 

(( TX 's nae use," he cried, " he 's first in the 
J. Humanity oot o' a hundred and seeventy 
lads, first o' them a', and he's first in the 
Greek too ; the like o' this is hardly known, 
and it has na been seen in Drumtochty since 
there was a schule. That's the word he's 
sent, and he bade me tell his mother without 
delay, and I am here as fast as my old feet 
could carry me." 

I glanced round, although I did not myself 
see very clearly. 

Marget was silent for the space of five 
seconds ; she was a good woman, and I knew 
that better afterwards. She took the Dominie's 
hand, and said to him, *' Under God this was 
your doing, Maister Jamieson, and for your 
reward ye 'ill get naither silver nor gold, but ye 
hae a mither's gratitude." 

Beside tJie Bofinie Brier Bush. 



September 13 

WE are amused by the societies which are 
the custodians of Ruskin and Browning, 
but none can be indifferent to the manipulation 
of Jesus' words. If Jesus' delicate poetry be 
reduced to prose, and the fair, carved work of 
His parables be used for the building of prisons, 
and His lovely portrait of God be " restored" 
with grotesque colouring, and His lucid prin- 
ciples of life be twisted into harassing regula- 
tions, then Jesus has been much wronge<l, and 
the world has suffered irreparable loss. 

Tlu Mitid oftlie Master. 

September 14 

ONE thing the pastor cannot do : criticise 
his people or make distinctions among 
them. Others, with no shepherd heart, may 
miss the hidden goodness ; he searches for it 
as for fine gold. Others may judge people for 
faults and sins ; he takes them for his own. 
Others may make people's foibles the subject 
of their raillery ; the pastor cannot because he 
loves. Does this interest on the part of one 
not related by blood or long friendship seem an 
impertinence .-' It ought to be pardoned, for it 
is the only one of the kind that is likely to be 
offered. Is it a sentiment } Assuredly, the 
same sublime devotion which has made Jesus 
the Good Shepherd of the soul. 

The Cure of Souls. 



September 15 

THE spirit of our day is so resentful of tradi- 
tionalism as to be even impatient of theol- 
ogy, which is foolish ; and to threaten faith, 
which would be ruin. No one, however, need 
be alarmed, for there is good reason to believe 
that the end will be the toleration of a noble 
science and the re-establishment of faith. When 
workmen come with pickaxe and shovel, it is 
either to destroy or to discover, and the aim of 
present thought is discovery. 

TJie Mind of tJie Master. 



September 16 

THE religious nomad, who changes his 
church every three years, who assures each 
minister on arrival that in his poor judgment he 
is the most brilliant preacher in the city, who 
begins by attending every service in the week, 
and can hardly be kept out of the mothers' 
meeting, who regrets that he cannot give to the 
funds as his means have long been consecrated 
in a special direction — whose wife calls towards 
the end of the three years to explain that she 
feels it her duty to go with her husband, who is 
receiving much benefit from a course of lectures 
on the Vials of the Revelation, given by the 
new minister of a neighbouring church. 

The Cure of Sotils. 



September 17 

" TTOWER o 's," resumed MacLure ; " an' 
jL Sandie got a Russian bayonet through 
his breist fechtin' ae snawy nicht in the trenches, 
an' puir Squintydee'd oot in Ameriky wearyin' 
for the Glen, an' wishin' he cud be buried in 
Drumtochty kirkyaird. Fine laddies baith, an' 
that 's twa o' the fower truants that hae gane 
hame. You an' me, Drum, hed the farthest 
road tae traivel that nicht, an' we're the laist 
again. The sun 's settin' for us tae ; we've 
hed a gude lang day, and ye '11 hae a whilie 
aifter me, but we maun follow the ither twa." 
" Ye 're richt, Weelum, aboot the end o 't, 
whichever gangs first," said Drumsheugh. 

T/ie Days of A uld Lang Syne. 

September i8 

WE have often hoped for reconciliation be- 
tween science and religion, where none 
is needed ; often hoped for reconciliation be- 
tween reason and faith, where none is needed, 
since each works in a different department of 
human life ; but there is a reconciliation needed 
for which all devout and reverent men yearn, 
and it is the reconciliation between dogma and 
religion. They are not antagonistic, and if 
they have ever been forced into lamentable riv- 
alry, they will make a covenant of peace in the 
love of the Father and of Jesus Christ His son. 

Tlie Cure of Smth. 



September 19 

COULD Jesus who gave the Sermon on the 
Mount and the discourse of the upper 
room, who satisfied St. John and loosed St. 
Mary Magdalene from her sin, and who remains 
the unapproachable ideal of perfection, be anni- 
hilated by a few nails and the thrust of a Roman 
spear ? . . . The certainty of Jesus' Resurrec- 
tion does not rest in the last issue on His iso- 
lated appearances during the forty days ; it 
rests on His Life for thirty-three years. His 
Life was beyond the reach of death ; it was Age- 
less Life. The Mi7id of tlie Master. 



September 20 

IF the sermon be in its degree a prophetical 
utterance, then it must be in its essence a 
mystery. What the prophet tells forth he must 
first be told, but how God uncovers His ser- 
vant's ear and whispers His message no one 
can explain. The true preacher is distinguished 
by a certain demonic influence — a divine pas- 
sion — which breathes through the thought, the 
words, the very manner, which cannot be de- 
scribed, which is felt in the marrow of the bones. 
This is the only infallible sign of a prophet ; it 
is the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and about 
such secret and sacred things it becometh one to 
be silent and to fear. -phe Cure of Souls. 



September 21 

" T T THEN I was your verra age I had a 
V V cruel trial, and ma heart was turned 
frae faith. The classics hae been my bible, 
though I said naethin' to ony man against 
Christ. He aye seemed beyond man, and noo 
the veesion o' Him has come to me in this gair- 
den. Laddie, ye hae dune farmair for me than 
I ever did for you. WuU ye male a prayer for 
yir auld dominie afore we pairt ? " 

There was a thrush singing in the birches and 
a sound of bees in the air, when George prayed 
in a low, soft voice, with a little break in it. 

Beside ilie Bonnie Brier Bush. 

September 11 

JESUS fused His disciples into one body, and, 
by this act alone, separated Himself from 
the method of philosophy. Philosophy is con- 
tent with an audience ; Jesus demands a society. 
Philosophy teaches men to think \ Jesus moves 
them to do. Philosophy can do no more be- 
cause it has no centre of unity: the kingdom of 
God is richer, for there is Jesus. Socrates ob- 
literated himself 5 Jesus asserted Himself, and 
united His followers to each other by binding 
them to Himself. Loyalty to Jesus was to be 
the spinal cord to the new body, and the sacra- 
ments were to be the signs of the new spirit. 

T!ie Mind of the Master. 



WHAT is wanting, and what cannot be 
wanted, is the sense of the unseen and 
eternal — of the everlasting love of God, the 
atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, the 
unspeakable value of a single soul, the infinite 
pathos of human life, the tenderness of the Holy 
Ghost, and the graciousness of the Evangel. 
Bathed in such springs of profound emotion, no 
man will be able to preach without tears, which 
will be all the more affecting if they be in the 
heart rather than in the eyes. xJt^ Cure of Souls. 

September 24 

PHYSICAL death Jesus refused to recog- 
nise ; it was an incident in the history of 
Life. Death was a calamity of the soul, and a 
living soul was invulnerable. " I am the Res- 
urrection and the Life : he that bclieveth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and 
whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall 
never die." It was a brave struggle for reality, 
and liberated the first disciples from the bond- 
age of the physical ; but the atmosphere is too 
rare for His modern disciples, who, for the most 
part, speak exactly as if they were Pagans 
in the Street of Tombs at Athens, instead of 
Christians who had sat at Jesus' feet. 

The Mind of Ou; Master. 



September 25 

" /""NH, I ken weel that George is gaein' to 
V_>/ leave us ; but it 's no because the 
Almichty is jealous o' him or me, no likely. 
It cam' to me last nicht that He needs my 
laddie for some grand wark in the ither world, 
and that's hoo George has his bukes brocht 
oot tae the garden and studies a' the day. He 
wants to be ready for his kingdom, just as he 
trachled in the bit schule o' Drumtochty for 
Edinbro'. I hoped he wud hae been a minis- 
ter o' Christ's Gospel here, but he 'ill be judge 
over many cities yonder." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 

September 16 

THERE are times when one wishes he had 
never read the New Testament Scrip- 
tures — that he might some day open St. Luke's 
Gospel, and the most beautiful book in the world 
might come upon his soul like sunrise. It is 
a doubtful fortune to be born in Athens and 
every day to see the Parthenon against the violet 
sky : better to make a single pilgrimage and 
carry for ever the vision of beauty in your heart. 
Devout Christians must be haunted by the fear 
that Jesus' sublime words may have lost their 
heavenliness through our familiarity, or that they 
may have been overlaid by our conventional 
interpretations. T/ie Mind of the Master. 



September 27 

AMONG all the houses in a Scottish parish 
the homeliest and kindliest is the manse, 
for to its door some time in the year comes 
every inhabitant, from the laird to the cottar- 
woman. Within the familiar and old-fashioned 
study, where the minister's chair and writing- 
table could not be changed without discompos- 
ing the parish, and where there are fixed degrees 
of station, so that the laird has his chair and 
the servant lass hers, the minister receives and 
does his best for all the folk committed to his 
charge. K^te Carnegie, 

September 28 

WE ought to discern the real strength of 
Christianity and revive the ancient pas- 
sion for Jesus. It is the distinction of our 
religion : it is the guarantee of its triumph. 
Faith may languish ; creeds may be changed ; 
churches may be dissolved ; society may be 
shattered. But one cannot imagine the time 
when Jesus will not be the fair image of perfec- 
tion, or the circumstances wherein He will not 
be loved. He can never be superseded; he can 
never be exceeded. Religions will come and 
go, the passing shapes of an eternal instinct, but 
Jesus will remain the standard of the conscience 
and the satisfaction of the heart, whom all men 
seek, in whom all men will yet meet. 

The Mind of the Master. 



September 29 



HE can understand truth whose mind has 
been illuminated by the Spirit of God 
and his heart cleansed by the Cross of Christ. 
It is good to use all the means of learning with 
diligence, but best to live in fellowship with 
Jesus, for he only who comes forth from the 
secret place of God will carry with him the 
Living Word and the Divine Unction. 

The Cure of Souls. 



September 30 

THEY talked of many things at tea, with joy 
running over Drumsheugh's heart ; and 
then spoke of Geordie all the way across the 
moor, on which the moon was shining. They 
parted at the edge, where Marget could see the 
lights of home, and Drumsheugh caught the 
sorrow of her face for him that had to go back 
alone to an empty house. 

" Dinna peety me, Marget; a've hed ma 
reward, an' a'm mair than content." 

On reaching home he opened the family 
Bible at a place that was marked, and this was 
what he read to himself : " They which shall 
be accounted worthy . . . neither marry nor 
are given in marriage . . . but are as the 
angels of God in heaven." 

The Days of Auld Lang Sync- 



October 

JESUS found a multitude of individuals and 
created a spiritual kingdom. The advance 
from a congeries of individuals to an organised 
society is marked by four milestones. First, 
we are simply conscious of other men and 
accept the fact of their existence; we realise 
our mutual dependence and come to a working 
agreement. This is the infancy of the Race, 
and conscience is not yet awake. Then we 
discover that there are certain things one must 
not do to his neighbour, and certain services 
one may expect from his neighbour, that to 
injure the next man is misery and to help him 
is happiness. This is the childhood of the Race, 
and conscience now asserts itself. Afterwards 
we begin to review the situation and to collect 
our various duties : we arrange them under 
heads and state them in black and white. This 
is the youth of the Race, and reason is now in 
action. Finally, we take up our list of black 
and white rules and try to settle their connec- 
tion. Is it not possible to trace them all to one 
root and comprehend them in one act? What 
a light to conscience, a relief to reason, a joy to 
the heart ! This is the mature manhood of the 
Race, and the heart is now in evidence. From 
an instinct to duties, from duties to niles, and 
now from rules to Law. State that Law, and 
the Race becomes one society. 

The Mind of the Master. 



October i 

HE had taken a high place at the University, 
and won a good degree, and I 've heard 
the Doctor say that he had a career before him. 
But something happened in his life, and Domsie 
buried himself among the woods with the bairns 
of Drumtochty. No one knew the story, but 
after he died I found a locket on his breast, with 
a proud, beautiful face within, and I have fan- 
cied it was a tragedy. It may have been in 
substitution that he gave all his love to the chil- 
dren, and nearly all his money too, helping lads 
to college, and affording an inexhaustible store 
of peppermints for the little ones. 

Beside ilie Bonnie Brier Bush. 

October 2 

WITH moderns, Deity and virtue are syn- 
onymous; with ancients, deities and vice 
were synonymous. Upon two hills only was 
the Divine raised above the 

" Howling senses' ebb and flow." 
One was the Acropolis where the golden shaft 
in Athene's hand guided the mariner passing 
Salamis. The other was the Holy Hill where 
Jeliovah remained the refuge of every righteous 
man. But the advantage lay with the Jew. 
The wisdom of Athens was seated in reason, 
and did not affect life : the wisdom of Jerusalem 
was seated in conscience, and created conduct. 
The Mind of the Master. 



October 3 

ORIGINALITY in literature is called dis- 
covery in science, and the lonely suprem- 
acy of Jesus rests not on what He said, but on 
what He did. Jesus is absolute Master in the 
sphere of religion, which is a science dealing not 
with intellectual conceptions, but with spiritual 
facts. His ideas are not words, they are laws ; 
they are not thoughts, they are forces. He did 
not suggest, He asserted what He had seen by 
direct vision. He did not propose. He com- 
manded as one who knew there was no other 
W^y- The Mind oftJie Master. 



October 4 

LET no man think lightly of the village 
church and its faithful pastor. 
Where would city Christianity be without 
the men and women of strong, stable character 
that are added from the country ? Who made 
their character >. This man who is unheard of, 
who is too often badgered about raising money, 
who has the lowest stipend, who goes home 
feeling himself a burden on the Church. Let 
him lift up his head. His is lasting work, for 
he has wrought in imperishable material — not 
in silver or gold, but in the souls of men. His 
Master knoweth : his reward remaineth. 

TIu Cure of Sotds. 



October 5 

FOR the moment the heroism of the deed 
had carried her away, but as she went 
home the pity of it all came over her. For the 
best part of his life had this man been toiling 
and suffering, all that another might have com- 
fort, and all this travail without the recompense 
of love. What patience, humility, tenderness, 
sacrifice lay in unsuspected people ! How long ? 
. . . Perhaps thirty years, and no one knew, 
and no one said, "Well done !" He had 
veiled his good deeds well, and accepted many 
a jest that must have cut him to the quick. 
Marget's heart began to warm to this unassum- 
ing man as it had not done even by George's 
Cnair. xhe Days of A uld Lang Syne. 



October 6 

IT must have been a great joy to breathe the 
air in the periods of Renaissance, whether 
in Physics or in Letters — to live in the days 
that preceded the Reformation, when classical 
scholarship was revived and placed again before 
the world : to live in the days of Elizabethan 
Letters, and to feel the inspiration of Spenser 
and Shakespeare! Some of us know what it 
is to have seen the immense discoveries and 
bright hopefulness of physical science in the 
century. T^/^^ Cure of Souls. 



October 7 

LIFE, as Jesus understood it, consisting of 
Love and Sacrifice, does not belong to 
any age because it is the inhabitant of all. Its 
roots are struck into the unchanging and eternal. 
It has already a spiritual environment, and when 
this present state of things is removed Life will 
rise to its full height and find itself at home. 
This is Life which cannot be lost. Life to-day, 
it would have been Life when the Pyramids 
were new, it will be Life when the earth is an 
ice-cold ball. Life is contemporaneous with 
all the centuries, it anticipates and closes them. 
"Time is a parenthesis in eternity," says a 
fine old classic. The Mind of the Master. 

October 8 

IF sin be a principle in a man's life, then it 
is evident that it cannot be affected by the 
most pathetic act in history exhibited from with- 
out; it must be met by an opposite principle 
working from within. If sin be selfishness, as 
Jesus taught, then it can only be overcome by 
the introduction of a spirit of self-renunciation. 
Jesus did not denounce sin : negative religion 
is always impotent. He replaced sin by virtue, 
which is a silent revolution. As the light enters, 
the darkness departs, and as soon as one re- 
nounced himself, he had ceased from sin. 

The Mind of the Master. 



October 9 

CHARLIE knelt on the turf before the stone, 
and, taking off his hat, prayed God his 
sins miglit be forgiven, and that one day he 
might meet the trusting hearts that had not 
despaired of his return. 

He rose uncomforted, however, and stood 
beneath the beech where Jamie Soutar had 
once lashed him for his unmanliness. Looking 
down, he saw the fields swept clean of grain ; 
he heard the sad murmur of the water, that 
laughed at the shortness of life ; withered leaves 
fell at his feet, and the October sun faded from 
the kirkyard. A chill struck to his heart, be- 
cause there was none to receive his repentance, 
none to stretch out to him a human hand, and 
bid him go in peace. 

Trie Days of A uld Lang Syne. 



October 10 

IT is a question whether one is wise to revisit 
any place where he has often been in happier 
times and see it desolate. For me, at least, it 
was a mistake, and the melancholy is still upon 
me. The deserted house falling at last to 
pieces, the overgrown garden, the crumbling 
paths, the gaping bridges over the little burns, 
and the loneliness, chilled one's soul. 

Kate Carnegie, 



October 1 1 

I'^HIS sublime passion did not die with the 
sacrifice of the martyrs, a mere hysteric 
of Religion, for it has continued unto this day 
the hidden spring of all sacrifice and beauty in 
the Christian life. The immense superstitions 
of the Middle Ages were redeemed by the 
love of Jesus, radiant in the life of St. Francis, 
reflected from the labours of the " Friends of 
God." There was a glory over all the bitter 
controversies of the sixteenth century, because 
on the one side piety desired a spiritual access to 
Jesus' Person ; and on the other, piety longed 
for the comfort of His Real Presence. 

The Mind of the Master. 

October 12 

" T ONCE heard him preach," said a man 
X of letters, who was referring to a dis- 
tinguished clergyman, <' and it was an excellent 
sermon — about the best in my experience." 
"His text.?" "I have not the ghost of an 
idea, nor do I remember his argument, nor 
anything he said." " How do I know that it 
was good .'' Because before we left church he 
convinced us that God was love. I am not 
sure that I believe that to-day, but I believed it 
that morning. — Yes," he added, "that man 
deserves his name, for he knows his business." 

The Ctire of Souls. 



October 13 

IF any one is so fortunate as to hold in his 
heart and in its fulness the Catholic faith 
concerning Jesus, his richly developed charac- 
ter will be the unanswerable vindication of his 
creed. If one, less fortunate, should miss that 
full vision of Jesus, which is the inheritance 
of the saints, then it will be the less necessary 
to criticise his creed, since a frost-bitten and 
poverty-stricken character will be its swift con- 
demnation. TJie Mind of the Master. 

October 14 

WHEN we have got into our blood for 
ever the conception of God which crowns 
Him the King, Holy and Almighty, we are 
prepared upon a sound moral basis to receive 
Him as the loving and merciful Father. One 
therefore anticipates that the new doctrine will 
be based on the conception of the Divine 
Fatherhood — not the Fatherhood which throws 
away the Judgeship and the Righteousness of 
God, but the Fatherhood that gathers these up 
into a nobler and final unity , and that the 
Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the 
revelation of the Father and the Head of the 
human race, will yield more blessed and prac- 
tical fruit in the life of the race from year to 
y^^''- The Cure of Souls. 



October 15 

GIVING is a fine grace and an excellent dis- 
cipline for character, but endless and pa- 
thetic begging for money, with all sorts of 
expedients from bazaars to tea-meetings, is not 
at all within the range of grace, and aids no 
one's character. The Cure of Souls. 

JESUS did not repeat the role of Moses. He 
did not forbid His disciples to steal or 
tell lies ; it would have been a waste of His 
power to teach the alphabet of morals. He 
takes morality for granted, and carves what 
Moses has hewn. His great discourse moves 
not in the sphere of duty but in the atmosphere 
oFlove. 'ni£ Mind o/tlie Master. 

October 16 

" T^ INN A fash wi' medicine ; gie her plenty 
J_V o' fresh milk and plenty o' air. There 's 
nae leevin' for a doctor wi' that Drumtochty 
air ; it hasna a marra in Scotland. It starts 
frae the Moray Firth and sweeps doon Bade- 
noch, and comes ower the moor o' Rannoch 
and across the Grampians. There 's the salt 
o' the sea, and the caller air o' the hills, and 
the smell o' the heather, and the bloom o' 
mony a flower in 't. If there 's nae disease in 
the organs o' the body, a puff o' Drumtochty 
air wud bring back a man frae the gates o' 
deith. ' ' Beside tlie Bonnie Brier Bush. 



October 17 

JESUS knew that it was not possible to di- 
vide men into two classes by the foliage 
of the outer life, as it is seen from the highway. 
Few people are saints or devils in their daily 
conduct : most are a mixture of good and bad. 
Below the variety of action lies the unity of 
principle. Some people have grave faults and 
yet we believe they are good ; some are para- 
gons of respectability and yet we are sure they 
are bad. No one would refuse St. Peter a 
place with Jesus, although he denied Him once 
with curses ; none propose a place with Jesus 
for Judas, although he only committed himself 
once in public. An instinct tells us the direc- 
tion of the soul 5 the trend of character. 

The Mind of the Master. 

October 18 

ONE of the lassies, specially dressed for the 
occasion, was continually bringing in hot 
water and reserve tea-pots, till the doctor 
accused Drumsheugh of seven cups, and 
threatened him with the session for immoderate 
drinking ; and Drumsheugh hinted that the 
doctor was only one short himself. Simple 
fooling of country-folk, that would sound very 
poor beside the wit of the city, but who shall 
estimate the love in Burnbrae's homely room 

that evening .■' The Days 0/ A tild Lang Sytte. 



October 19 

CRITICISM has offended the Church by its 
pretentiousness, for its preachers were 
apt to speak as if they had a new Gospel. Of 
course they had nothing, and could have noth- 
ing, of the kind. They have given a large 
amount of information and they have removed 
some traditions, but a message for the soul 
criticism can never offer. The Gospel is a 
certain voice of God, which sounds from the 
first book of the Bible to the last, and any science 
which handles the body of the books does not 
come near the soul. The critic has established 
a debt of gratitude at the hands of the Church, 
but when he confounds himself with the evan- 
gelist he has forgotten his place. 

The Cure of Sends. 



October 20 

SOME have imagined an earthly paradise for 
the race, where it would have remained 
ignorant of good and evil, without exertion, 
without hardship. Jesus saw with clearer eyes. 
He made no moan over a lost Eden, He knew 
that it is a steep road that leads to the stars. 
Jesus believed that the price of all real life is 
suffering, and that a man must sell all that he 
has to buy the pearl of great price. 

The Mind of the Master. 



October 21 

THE pastor does not delay over the appear- 
ance and circumstances of a man any more 
than Christ did j lilce his Master he pierces to 
the spiritual part, the real man. He is always 
impressed, and sometimes quite overwhelmed, 
by the value of the immortal soul — this soul, 
still plastic and unfired, for which he can do so 
much or so little. He trembles for it when he 
sees the destroyer hovering over it like a hawk 
poised in mid-air, and would fain have it 
gathered beneath Christ's wing. 

Tfie Cure of Scmh. 

!^ 
October 22 

THE thought of the Old Testament moves 
forward to the life of Jesus. Its conduct 
is revised by the commandments of Jesus ; its 
piety is crowned in Jesus' last discourses. We 
read the 53rd chapter of Isaiah in order that we 
may visit Calvary. The Ten Words are only 
eclipsed by the Law of Love. There is one 
passage dearer than the 23rd Psalm, and that 
is the 14th chapter of St. John's Gospel. The 
faith that would seek its guidance from the 
Patriarchs rather than from the Apostles, and 
quotes from history to qualify the Gospels, is 
elementary and undeveloped. 

The Mind of (he Master. 



October 23 

HE is a poor creature who cannot be angry, 
and who is not ready to challenge wanton 
evil-doers. The thunderstorm has its function, 
but let it be brief, and be followed by the clear 
shining after rain. Sarcasm serves so little pur- 
pose, and does so much mischief, that it had 
better be left out of the preacher's medicine- 
chest. People cannot be turned from sin by 
gibes, nor scourged into the Kingdom of God 
by sneers. xfie Cure of Souls. 



October 24 

" "" I "" AK the minister o' Pitscourlenoo; he's 
X fair fozzy wi' trokin' in his gairden an' 
feeding pigs, and hesna studied a sermon for 
thirty year. 

*< Sae what dis he dae, think ye ? He havers 
for a whilie on the errors o* the day, and syne 
he says, ' That 's what man says, but what says 
the Apostle Paul ? We shall see what the 
Apostle Paul says.' He puts on his glasses, 
and turns up the passage, and reads maybe ten 
verses, and then he's aff on the jundy [trot] 
again. When a man hes naethin' tae say he 's 
aye lang, and a've seen him gie half an oor o' 
passages, and anither half oor o' havers." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



October 25 

THERE are certain rights which are legal; 
there are certain rights which are natural. 
No law can take away the latter, nor can a man 
divest himself of them by any form of engage- 
ment ; and among the inherent rights of a Chris- 
tian man is his appeal to Jesus as the one Judge 
of truth. It has often lain dormant in the 
Church; it has at times been powerfully exer- 
cised. Some one discovers that the water of 
life is clearer and sweeter from the spring than 
in a cistern, and shows the grass-grown path to 
the spring. Tlie Mind of tJie Master. 

October 26 

WITHIN the heart of every true man the 
intention of the holy ministry is asso- 
ciated with romantic dreams and hopes. He 
does not expect a material reward, and he is pre- 
pared for hard work. He is willing to brave 
opposition and reproach to fulfil God's will; 
every sacrifice will have its compensation in 
those moments of reverent study when his heart 
suddenly burns within him and he knows Christ's 
presence is in the room, in hours when he can 
see the soul of his hearers leap into their faces 
in response to the Evangel, in days spent in 
carrying the Lord's consolation to the afflicted. 

The Cure of Souls. 



October 27 

IT is the prophet who has roused the race 
from ignoble sleep, has fired its imagination 
with lofty ideals, has nerved it for costly sacri- 
fices, has led it to victory. It is the prophet, 
above all, who, under Christ, has laid the founda- 
tions of the Church in every land, has restored 
her after periods of decay, has filled her with 
courage and hope. He is the teacher, comforter, 
fosterer, defender of his brethren, and therefore 
the chief office to which any man can be called 
is to declare the Will of God, and especially the 
Evangel of Christ. rhe Cure 0/ Souls. 



October 28 

" A ^^ °' "^^ ^^^ lassies," expatiated Dom- 
li. sie, "fell comin' doon the near road frae 
Whinnie Knowe, and cuttit her cheek on the 
stones, and if Lachlan didna wash her face and 
comfort her; an' mair, he carried her a' the road 
tae the schule, and says he in his Hieland way, 
'Here iss a brave little woman that hass hurt 
herself, but she will not be crying,' and he gave 
her a kiss and a penny tae buy some sweeties 
at the shop. It minded me o' the Gude Samari- 
tan, fouks," and everybody understood that 
Lachlan had captured Domsie for life. 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



October 29 

IT was Jesus who summoned Love to meet 
the severe demands of Faith, and wedded 
for the first time the ideas of Passion and Right- 
eousness. Hitherto Righteousness had been 
spotless and admirable, but cold as ice ; Passion 
had been sweet and strong, but unchastened and 
wanton. Jesus suddenly identifies Righteous- 
ness with Himself, and has brought it to pass 
that no man can love Him without loving 
Righteousness. Jesus clothes Himself with 
the commandments, and each is transfigured 
into a grace. The Mmd of the Master. 



October 30 

ONE thing the minister must lay to his heart 
and impress on his people, and that is the 
perfect harmony between faith and criticism. 
Without any exception, the most reliable and 
brilliant scholars of our English-speaking com- 
munions have been, or are, believing and devout 
men, who rejoice to turn from the study of the 
literature to declare the Gospel of the Bible. 
It ought also to be pointed out, that the total 
results of criticism, when they converge upon a 
point, have been, not to obscure or belittle 
Christ, but rather to throw Him into supreme 
relief Whom all the prophets anticipated. Whom 
the apostles declared. j-he Cure of Souls. 



October 31 

"1\ /TAN, Chairlle, it did me gude tae hear 

IVX that ye had played the man in Ameriky, 
an' that ye didna forget the puir laddies o' 
Drumtochty. Ay, Jamie telt me afore he dee'd, 
an' prood he wes aboot ye. ' Lily 's gotten her 
wish,' he said; 'a' kent she wud.' 

*' He wes sure ye wud veesit the auld Glen 
some day, an' wes feared there wudna be a 
freend tae gie ye a word. Ye wes tae slip awa 
tae Muirtown the nicht withoot a word, an' 
nane o 's tae ken ye hed been here .' Na, na, 
gin there be a cauld hearth in yir auld hame, 
there's a warm corner in ma hoose for Lily's 
brither," and so they went home together. 

When they arrived Saunders was finishing 
the last stack, and broke suddenly into speech. 

"Ye thocht, Drumsheugh, we would never 
get that late puckle in, but here it is, safe and 
soond, an' a '11 warrant it 'ill buke [bulk] as 
weel as ony in the threshin'." 

"Ye 're richt, Saunders, and a bonnie stack 
it maks;" and then Charlie Grant went in 
with Dnunsheugh to the warmth and the 
kindly light, while the darkness fell upon the 
empty harvest -field, from which the last sheaf 
had been safely garnered. 

TJie Days of A uld Lang Syne. 



November 

ANY bookman can estimate a library by 
scent — if an expert he could even write out 
a catalogue of the books and sketch the appear- 
ance of the owner. Heavy odour of polished 
mahogany, Brussels carpets, damask curtains, 
and table-cloths ; then the books are kept within 
glass, consist of sets of standard works in half 
calf, and the owner will give you their cost whole- 
sale to a farthing. Faint fragrance of delicate 
flowers, and Russia leather, with a hint of cigar- 
ettes ; prepare yourself for a marvellous wall- 
paper, etchings, bits of oak, limited editions, and 
a man in a velvet coat. Smell of paste and cloth 
binding and general newness means yesterday's 
books and a man racing through novels with a 
paper-knife. Those are only book-rooms by 
courtesy, and never can satisfy any one who has 
breathed the sacred air. It is a rich and strong 
spirit, not only filling the room, but pouring out 
from the door and possessing the hall, redeeming 
an opposite dining-room from grossness, and a 
more distant drawing-room from frivolity, and 
even lending a goodly flavour to bedrooms on 
upper floors. It is distilled from curious old duo- 
decimos packed on high shelves out of sight, and 
blows over folios, with large clasps, that once stood 
in monastery libraries, and gathers a subtle sweet- 
ness from parchments that were illuminated in an- 
cient scriptoriums that are nowgrass-grown, and is 
fortified with good old musty calf. K^te Carnegie. 



November i 

IT is sufficient that a church should be noth- 
ing more at first than four strong walls and 
a sound roof, and that from year to year tlie 
people that have been blessed therein should 
give, one a painted window, another a piece of 
oak carving, a third a Holy Table, a fourth a 
font, till the church house be filled and beauti- 
fied with the gifts of her children, and it is for 
the minister to insist on that morality which is 
the foundation of true beauty, and to move his 
people to bestow those gifts which form its 
crown. The Cure of Souls. 

November i 

JESUS addressed Himself to the unity of 
moral law in His first great public utterance, 
and only concluded His treatment before His 
arrest in the garden. His Sermon on the Mount 
was a luminous and comprehensive investiga- 
tion of the ten words with a purpose — to detect 
their spiritual source and organic connection. 
It was the analysis of a code in order to identify 
the principle. It was the experimental search 
for a law, conducted with every circumstance 
of spiritual interest before a select audience 5 it 
was a sustained suggestion by a score of illus- 
trations that the law had been found. 

The Mind oftlie Master. 



November 3 

" 1\T ^^' '^'''^'"^'s "^^ kirk, an' we maunna 
1 M forget it, for a've been rael happy 
there. Ma sittin' wes due the beginnin' o' the 
month, and a' aye gied ten shillin's tae the 
missions. An', Jamie, they were speakin' o' 
presentin' the minister wi' some bit token o' 
respect aifter bein' twenty-five years here. Pit 
me doon for a poond — no' ma name, ye ken ; 
that wud be forward : juist . . . ' A gratefu' 
servant-lass. ' ' y-^ j^^ys o/Auld Lang Syne. 

November 4 

NEXT morning Sir Andrew and the min- 
ister were standing by Lily's bedside, and 
only looked at him when he joined them. 

" Jamie . . . thank ye a' . . . ower gude 
tae ... a servant-lass . . . tell them ... at 
hame." 

Each man bade her good-bye, and the min- 
ister said certain words which shall not be 
written. 

" Thae . . . weary stairs," and she breathed 
heavily for a time ; then, with a sigh of relief, 
" A 'm comin'." 

" Lily has reached the . . . landing," said 
Sir Andrew, and as they went downstairs no 
man would have looked at his neighbour's face 
for a ransom. The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



November 5 

WHEN people congratulate themselves be- 
cause a sermon has been clear, it really 
means that it has been theological ; and this 
may be true, although there be not one word 
of theology in it from beginning to end. The 
vine hid the trellis-work. The Cure of Souls. 

November 6 

No one has yet discovered the word Jesus 
ought not to have said, none suggested 
the better word He might have said. No action 
of His has shocked our moral sense 5 none has 
fallen short of the ideal. He is full of surprises, 
but they are all the surprises of perfection. You 
are never amazed, one day by His greatness, the 
next by His littleness. You are ever amazed 
that He is incomparably better than you could 
have expected. He is tender without being 
weak, strong without being coarse, lowly with- 
out being servile. He has conviction without 
intolerance, enthusiasm without fanaticism, holi- 
ness without Pharisaism, passion without preju- 
dice. This Man alone never made a false step, 
never struck a jarring note. His life alone 
moved on those high levels where local limita- 
tions are transcended and the absolute Law of 
Moral Beauty prevails. It was life at its 
highest. The Mind of the Master. 



November 7 

THE very church has a hold on the pious 
mind, that grows with the years and lasts 
till death removes the man to the upper sanctu- 
ary. People with prosaic minds see him on 
Sunday morning passing a dozen fashionable 
suburban churches, and trudging down to a 
dingy place in the city, and they refer it to his 
old-fashioned ways and that cat-spirit which 
clings to a building. They do him less than 
justice ; they have too little imagination. He 
has his own reasons, this unsentimental, matter- 
of-fact man. ^ T/te Cure 0/ Souls. 

November 8 

MOSES said, " Do this or do that." Jesus 
refrained from regulations — He pro- 
posed that we should love. Jesus, while hardly 
mentioning the word, planted the idea in His 
disciples' minds, that Love was Law. For three 
years He exhibited and enforced Love as the 
principle of life, until, before He died, they 
understood that all duty to God and man was 
summed up in Love. Progress in the moral 
world is ever from complexity to simplicity. 
First one hundred duties ; afterwards they are 
gathered into ten commandments ; then they 
are reduced to two : love of God and love of 
man 5 and, finally, Jesus says His last word : 
" This is my commandment, that ye love one 
another, as I have loved you." 

The Mind of the Master. 



November 9 

FOR one to be a Christian, it is only neces- 
sary that he be loyal j but to be a Chris- 
tian of the first order, he must be mystical. 
Jesus still comes to us in our outer life, and 
blessed is the man who arises and follows Him 
whithersoever He goes. Jesus still comes to the 
door of the soul, and that man is most blessed 
who receives the Lord into his guest-chamber. 

TJie Upper Room. 

A COURSE of sermons on the metaphysics 
of faith, followed by another on the phil- 
osophy of prayer, will go far to make infidels 
of a congregation. One wants his drinking- 
water taken through a filter-bed, but greatly 
objects to gravel in his glass. rhe Cure of Souls. 

November 10 

""\ JE'LL no' be angry, but a' telt Marget 
X Hoo ae day aboot oor tribble an' ma 
houp o' Chairlie — for ye canna look at Marget 
an' no' want tae unburden yersel' — an' she 
said, ' Dinna be ashamed o' yir dreams, Lily ; 
they'll a' come true some day, for we canna 
think better than God wull dae.' " 

" Marget Hoo is nearer the hert o' things 
thanonybody in the Glen, an' a'm prayin' she 
may be richt. Get the bukes ; it's time for 
oor rea din' . " The Days of A uld Lang Syne. 



November 1 1 



THE passion for Jesus has no analogy in 
comparative religion ; it has no parallel in 
human experience. It is a flame of unique 
purity and intensity. Thomas does not believe 
that Jesus is the Son of God, or that, more than 
any other man, He can escape the hatred of 
fanaticism ; but he must share the fate of Jesus. 
"Let us also go," said this morbid sceptic, 
" that we may die with Him." At the sight 
of His face seven devils went out of Mary Mag- 
dalene ; for the blessing of His visit, a chief 
publican gave half his goods to the poor. 
When a man of the highest order met Jesus he 
was lifted into the heavenly places and became 
a Christed man, whose eyes saw with the vision 
of Christ, whose pulse beat with the heart of 
C h rist. Tke Mitid of the Master. 

November 12 

IT is a pleasant occupation to watch the clouds 
wreathing themselves around a mountain, 
and one catches lovely glimpses when the sun 
shines through the mist. But billowy masses 
of words, with an occasional exquisite revela- 
tion, is not profitable preaching, and, at its best, 
it can never hold the people who are not es- 
pecially poetical, but have a passionate desire 
to know what the speaker means. 

The Cure of Souls. 



November 13 

THURSDAY opens well, and the minister 
begins to work for Sunday, when a visitor 
comes, and then a crowd — a young lady who 
is anxious to be a nurse ; a young man (who 
was once at the young men's sermon) to get a 
testimonial for a situation ; a member of the 
church with no business, who wished to intro- 
duce a country friend ; the travelling secretary 
of some third-rate society, whose time is paid j 
an elderly person who got good from one of the 
minister's sermons in a strange church, and 
borrows five shillings. The Cure of Souls. 

November 14 

" T T 7ELL, ye see he 's terrible prood o' his 
V V feenishes, and this is ane o' them : 

" ' Heaven, ma brethren, will be far grander 
than the hoose o' ony earthly potentate, for there 
ye will no longer eat the flesh of bulls nor drink 
the blood o' goats, but we shall sook the juicy 
pear and scoop the loocious meelon. Amen.' 

" He hes nae mair sense o' humour than an 
owl, and a' aye haud that a man withoot 
humour sudna be allowed intae a poopit. 

" A' hear that they have nae examination in 
humour at the college ; it 's an awfu' want, for 
it wud keep oot mony a dreich body." 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. 



November 15 

" ' ^/^/HATNA place is this, George ? ' an' 
V V he taks afF the cover an' hands np 
the picture. It wud hae dune ye gude tae hae 
seen the licht in the laddie's een. ' Athens,' 
he cried, an' then he reached oot his white hand 
tae Drumsheugh, but naething wes said. 

" They were at it the hale forenoon, Geordie 
showin' the Temple the Greeks set up tae 
Wisdom, an' the theatre in the shadow of the 
hill whar the Greek prophets preached their 
sermons ; an' as a' gaed oot an' in, Geordie 
wud read a bonnie bit, and Domsie himsel' 
cudna hae been mair interested than Drum- 
sheugh. The deein' scholar an' the auld 

fai rm er . . . . " xJu Days of A uld Lang Syne. 

November 16 

THOSE mornings given to Plato, that visit to 
Florence where he got an insight into 
Italian art, that hard-won trip to Egypt the 
birthplace of civilisation, his sustained acquaint- 
ance with Virgil, his by-study of physical 
science, liis taste in music, the subtlest and 
most religious of the arts, all now rally to his 
aid. Greek philosophy clarifies the thinking, 
Andrea Del Sarto illustrates it ; a poet suggests 
a musical line ; Faraday points out a parallel 
between the worlds of nature and spirit. 

TJie Cure of Souls. 



November 17 

WHOSOEVER holds the pastoral office 
must learn to keep secrets, and must be 
on his guard against careless speech. What he 
has to fear is not dishonour through wilful breach 
of trust, but mere leakiness. The pastor does 
not consider his own wife a privileged person 
in this matter, for though she might be the most 
prudent and reticent of women, yet it would 
embarrass his people to know that their secrets 
were shared with her. The high honour of 
doctors, who carry in their breasts so many 
social tragedies, is an example to be followed 
by the clerical profession. The Ctire of Souls, 

November 18 

JESUS had to contend with a more inexcus- 
able misuse which binds up the life of a 
man, not with his body, but with his material 
environment. According to this squalid defi- 
nition. Life is made up of circumstances ; if 
they are pleasant, the man has an easy life ; 
if they are adverse, he has a hard life. Life is 
stated in terms of food and raiment, and goods 
and houses. Against this degradation of life 
Jesus lifted up His voice in a protest which ad- 
mits of no answer. He was never weary of re- 
minding His disciples that such things could not 
constitute Life, and were, indeed, so unworthy 
as to be beneath care. rhe MindoftJie Master. 



November 19 

IF anything could rouse a sluggard and move 
him to play the man, it would be his wife's 
faith in him. All over the world, within and 
without the ministry, hard-working and self- 
sacrificing women are covering useless vaga- 
bonds and apologising for their faults, and 
assigning them to ill-health, and prophesying 
the great things they will yet do. God grant 
the man may do something for that woman's 
sake. The Cure of Souls. 

November 20 

No teacher ever gave such pledges of divine 
authority as Jesus; no people could have 
been better prepared for His Evangel than the 
Jews. They had been set apart as in a cloister 
that they might hear the Divine voice, and a 
succession of prophets had come from the pres- 
ence of God to declare the Divine Will. A 
nation had been trained in the liope of the Mes- 
siah to wait for the dayspring from on high and 
the fulness of God's kingdom. It might have 
been expected that this well-tilled field would 
have been open soil for Jesus' words, and one 
dares to believe that there might have been an 
auspicious seedtime had the Jews passed, say, 
from Isaiah to Jesus, or had Jesus come wliile 
the glow of Daniel's visions was still fresh. 

TPie Mind of the Master. 



November 21 



" "X ZE mind the bit lassiky" — MacLiire would 

X tell all when he was at it — "that lived 
wi' Mary Robertson, and Jamie Soiitar made 
sic a wark. aboot, for her mither wes deid; she 
wes chokin' wi' her tribble, an' a' took her on 
ma knee, for Daisy and me were aye chief. 

" * Am a' gaein' tae dee the day ? ' she said, 
an a' cudna tell a lee lookin' intae yon een. 

(( i Ye 're no' feared, dautie,' a' said; 'ye'll 
sune be hame.' 

"'Hand me ticht, then, Docksie ' — that 
wes her name for me — 'an' mither 'ill tak me 
oot o' yir airms.' . . . The Almichty wiid 
see the wee lassie wesna pit tae shame, or else 
. . . that's no His name." 

T/ze Days of A itld Lang Syne. 

November 22 

" \70U an' me are no' like Burnbrae and 
X the bairnie, Weelum ; a 'in feared at 
times aboot . . . the hame-comin'." 

" A' dinna wunner, Dnimsheugh, a 'm often 
the same masel'; we're baith truant laddies, 
and maybe we'll get oor paiks, an' it 'ill dae 
us gude. But be that as it may, we maun juist 
risk it, an' a 'm houpin' the Almichty 'ill no be 
waur tae us than oor mither when the sun gnes 
doon and the nicht wind sweeps ower the hill." 
T/te Days of Aidd Lang Syne. 



November 23 

A HUNDRED thousand faces pass before 
your eyes and are forgotten, mere physical 
impressions; you see one, and it is in your heart 
for ever, as you saw it the first time. Wavy 
black hair, a low, straight forehead, hazel eyes 
with long eyelashes, a perfectly-shaped Grecian 
nose, a strong mouth whose upper lip had a 
curve of softness, a clear-cut chin with one dim- 
ple, small ears set high in the head, and a rich 
creamy complexion — that was what flashed 
upon Carmichael. Kate Carnegie. 

November 24 

THEY helped Milton out of bed next Thurs- 
day, and he sat in silence at a gable win- 
dow that commanded the bare fields. Twenty 
ploughs were cutting the stubble into brown 
ridges, and the crows followed the men as they 
guided the shares with stiff resisting body, while 
Drumsheugh could be seen going from field to 
field with authority. 

"What's this for?" inquired Milton at 
length; " naebody askit them, an' . . . them 
an' me hevna been pack [friendly] thae laist 
twa years." 

" It 's a love-darg," said his wife ; " because 
ye've been sober [ill], they juist want to show 
kindness, bein' cor neeburs." 

The Days of Auld Lang Syne. 



November 25 

" T~~\ID ye never want tae . . . tell her?'" 

1 ' and the doctor looked curiously at 

Drunisheugh. 

" Juist aince, Weelum, in her gairden, an' 
the day Geordie dee'd. Marget thankit me for 
the college fees and bit expenses a' hed paid. 
' A falther cudna hae been kinder tae ma lad- 
die,' she said, an' she laid her hand on ma 
airm. ' Ye 're a gude man, a' see it clear this 
day, an' . . . ma hert is . . . warm tae ye.' 
A' ran oot o' the gairden. A' micht hae 
broken doon. Oh, gin Geordie hed been ma 
ain laddie, an' Marget . . . ma wife !" 

The Days of A uld Lang Sytte. 

November 26 

ACCORDING to the mind of Jesus, the 
foresight which prepares one for the future 
life is a certain attitude of soul. No person, it 
may be assumed, would refuse the reversion of 
a blessed future, with its high hopes of the free- 
dom of holiness and the unfettered service of the 
Divine Will, but many persons are not minded 
to subordinate to its unseen excellence the solid 
possession of the present. They have made 
themselves so absolutely at home among the 
principles and rewards of a material world that 
they would be out of place amid the very differ- 
ent conditions and occupations of a spiritual 
world. It is this unfitness that will deny them 
a habitation. T lie Mind of the Master. 



November 2/ 

No photograph quite represents the face that 
was taken, or leaves the studio untouched. 
Certain lines have to be modified, certain blots 
to be removed. It will be a very gracious ser- 
mon that needs no retouching. Line by line 
the sermon has to be read over with the faces 
of his congregation before him, so that the 
minister may hear how it sounds in the living 
environment. Many things are incisive and 
telling, clever and sparkling, on paper, which 
we feel will not do face to face. They are now 
too telling, too clever. The Cure of Souls. 

November 28 

JESUS and His disciples share the same Life. 
He is the " Bread of Life," and they "eat." 
Jesus with this startling image flashes a descrip- 
tion of Life and answers the question, ever in the 
background of one's mind, "What is Life?" 
It is fellowship with the Spirit of Jesus, some- 
thing that cannot be estimated by the beating 
of the pulse, or the inventory of a man's posses- 
sions, that must be tested by conscience and the 
intangible scales of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
It will lie in a certain mind, in a certain ruling 
motive, in a certain trend of character, in a cer- 
tain obedience of will, in a certain passion for 
goodness, the same as that of Jesus. 

The Mind of tlie Master, 



November 29 

" A ' never dreamed o' this, an' a 'ni no' 
Jr\ worthy o' sic love, whereof I hev hed 
much fruit an' ye hev only pain." 

" Ye 're wrang, Marget, for the joy hes gaen 
ower the pain, an' a 've hed the greater gain. 
Love roosed me tae wark an' fecht, wha micht 
hae been a ne'er-dae-weei. Love savit me frae 
greed o' siller an' a hard hert. Love kept me 
clean in thocht an' deed, for it was ever Marget 
by nicht an' day. If a 'm a man the day, ye 
did it, though ye micht never hae kent it. It's 
little a' did for ye, but ye 've dune a' thing for 
me . . . Marget." 

After a moment he went on — 

" Twenty year ago a' cudna hae spoken wi' 
ye safely, nor taken yir man's hand withoot a 
grudge ; but there 's nae sin in ma love this 
day, an' a' wudna be ashamed though yir man 
heard me say, * A' love ye, Marget.' " 

T/ie Days of Au/d Lang Syne, 

November 30 

IT happens sometimes that a sermon fails be- 
cause although the carving is excellent the 
wood is worthless, but just as often because, 
although the wood be richly grained, the artist 
has scamped his labour. A noble and inspir- 
ing idea is only a promise of success, and the 
issue hangs on skill and patience. 

The Cure of Souls. 



December 

WINTER has certain mornings which re- 
deem weeks of misconduct, when the 
hoar frost during the niglit has re-silvered every 
branch and braced the snow upon the ground, 
and the sun rises in ruddy strength and drives 
out of sight every cloud and mist, and moves 
all day through an expanse of unbroken blue, 
and is reflected from the dazzling whiteness of 
the earth as from a mirror. Such a sight calls 
a man from sleep witli authority, and makes 
his blood tingle, and puts new heart in him, 
and banishes the troubles of the night. Other 
mornings Winter joins in the conspiracy of 
principalities and powers to daunt and crush the 
human soul. No sun is to be seen, and the 
grey atmosphere casts down the heart, the wind 
moans and whistles in fitful gusts, the black 
clouds hang low in threatening masses, now 
and again a flake of snow drifts in the wind. 
A storm is near at hand, not the thunder- 
shower of summer, with warm rain and the 
kindly sun in ambush, but dark and blinding 
snow, through which even a gamekeeper cannot 
see six yards, and in which weary travellers lie 
down to rest and die. Kate Carnegie. 



December i 



The Cure of Souls. 



CERTAIN churches, owing to high posi- 
tion and ancient descent, may think too 
mightily of themselves, and this came to my 
mind once when the beadle of a church in 
my own communion inquired of me where I 
was settled, and whether I was actually ordained, 
preparing me for a thin audience, as the Doctor 
was known to be from home, but cheering me 
before next service with the information that 
a fair number of people had returned — a cir- 
cumstance at which he could not conceal his 
astonishment. 

December 2 

EVERY reader of the Gospels has marked 
the sympathy of Jesus with children. 
How He watched their games ! How angry 
He was with His disciples for belittling them ! 
How He used to warn men, whatever they did, 
never to hurt a little child! How grateful were 
children's praises when all others had turned 
against Him! One is apt to admire the beauti- 
ful sentiment, and to forget that children were 
more to Jesus than helpless gentle creatures to 
be loved and protected. They were His chief 
parable of the Kingdom of heaven. As a type 
of character the Kingdom was like unto a little 
child, and the greatest in the Kingdom would 



be the most child-like. 



The Mind of the Mader. 



December 3 

CRITICISM has sinned through uncliari- 
tableness j for some of the pioneers of the 
new school have forgotten good manners, and 
liave not carried themselves respectfully to the 
past. While a discoverer in physics is ever grate- 
ful for the work done by his predecessors, and 
corrects their mistakes witli humility, recognis- 
ing that he stands on their shoulders, and that 
his results will also one day be revised, the 
biblical critic has been inclined to treat the old 
scholarship with unconcealed contempt, and to 
expose its errors with malignant satisfaction. 

The Cure of Souls. 



December 4 

PROGRESS by suffering is one of Jesus' 
most characteristic ideas, and, like every 
other, is embodied in the economy of human 
nature and confirmed by the sweep of hvmian 
history. The Cross marks every departure: 
the Cross is the condition of every achieve- 
ment. Modern Europe has emerged from the 
Middle Ages, Christianity from Judaism, Juda- 
ism from Egypt, Egypt from barbarism, with 
throes of agony. Humanity has fought its way 
upwards at the point of the bayonet, torn and 
bleeding, yet hopeful and triumphant. 

Tlie Mind of the Master. 



December 5 

A SERMON is more than a cunning crea- 
tion ; it is an inspiration, not so much 
dead stuff laboriously fitted together, but a tree 
whose leaf is green, which yieideth its fruit in 

due season. 7./^ Cure 0/ Souls. 

ALAS ! he need not take such care, for the 
walk was now as the border with grass, and 
the gate was lying open, and the dead house 
stared at him with open, unconscious eyes, and 
knew him not. jcate Carnegie. 

December 6 

""XT 7 HAT 'ill become o's when ye 're no 
V V here tae gie a' hand in time o' need ? 
we 'ill take ill wi' a stranger that disna ken ane 
o's frae anither." 

" It 's a' for the best, Paitrick, an' ye 'ill see 
that in a whilie. A 've kent fine that ma day 
wes ower, an' that ye sud hae a younger man. 

" A' did what a' cud tae keep up wi' the 
new medicine, but a' hed little time for readin', 
an' nane for traivellin'. 

" A 'm the last o' the auld schule, an' a' 
ken as weel as onybody thet a' wesna sae dainty 
an' fine-mannered as the town doctors. Ye 
took me as a' wes, an' naebody ever cuist up 
tae me that a' wes a plain man. Na, na ; 
ye 've been rael kind an' conseederate a' thae 
years . " The Days of A uld La7tg Syne. 



December 7 

FOR the innocent gaiety and lighter follies 
of youth the pastor has a vast toleration, 
for the sudden disasters of manhood an unfail- 
ing charity, for the unredeemed tragedies of age 
a great sorrow. It is a hard fight for every 
one, and it is not his to judge or condemn ; 
his it is to understand, to help, to comfort — 
for these people are his children, his pupils, his 
patients ; they are the sheep Christ has given 
him, for whom Christ died. xke Cure of Souls. 



December 8 

ACCORDING to Jesus, a well-conditioned 
child illustrates better than anything else 
on earth the distinctive features of Christian 
character. Because he does not assert nor ag- 
grandise himself. Because he has no memory 
for injuries, and no room in his heart for a 
grudge. Because he has no previous opinions, 
and is not ashamed to confess his ignorance. 
Because he can imagine, and has the key of 
another world, entering in through the ivory 
gate and living amid the things unseen and 
eternal. The new society of Jesus was a 
magnificent imagination, and he who entered 
it must lay aside the world standards and ideals 
of character, and become as a little child. 

Tlie Mind of tJie Master. 



December 9 

" T PRAYED that the message sent through 
Jl me to your flock, John, might be love. It 
hath pleased the Great Shepherd that I should 
lead the sheep by strange paths, but I desired 
that it be otherwise when I came for the first 
time to Dnuntochty. 

" Two days did I spend in the woods, for the 
stillness of winter among the trees leaveth the 
mind disengaged for the Divine word, and 
the first day my soul was heavy as I returned, 
for this only was laid upon me, ' vessels of wrath, 
fitted to destruction ' " Kate Carnegie 

December 10 

" TV T EXT day the sun was shining pleasantly 
IN in the wood, and it came to me that 
clouds had gone from the face of God, and as 
I wandered among the trees a squirrel sat on a 
branch within reach of my hand and did not 
flee. Then I heard a voice, ' I have loved 
tliee with an everlasting love, therefore with 
loving-kindness have I drawn thee.' 

" It was, in an instant, my hope that this 
might be God's word by me, but I knew not 
it was so till the Evangel opened up on all sides, 
and I was led into the outgoings of the eternal 
love after so moving a fashion that I dared to 
think that grace might be effectual even with 
me . . . with me." Kate Carnegie. 



December 1 1 

CONGREGATIONAL patriotism demands 
that, whatever differences of opinion the 
minister may have with his people, or whatever 
fatherly rebukes he may feel it his duty to give 
them, he should neither say one word against 
them outside, nor allow any reflection to be 
made upon them by a stranger. No man ex- 
poses his wife's faults, and no one dares criticise 
a wife to her husband 5 and people and minister 
are united in a sacred bond, sharing a common 
love and reputation. And the same Church 
feeling should keep the people true to their 
minister. The Cure ofSotds. 



December 12 

ALL our life from infancy to age we are in 
the school of love, and never does human 
nature so completely shed the slough of selfish- 
ness, or wear so generous a guise, or offer such 
ungrudging service as when under this sway. 
Here is stored to hand the latent dynamic for a 
spiritual enterprise; it only remains to make the 
connection. Do you wish a cause to endure 
hardness, to rejoice in sacrifice, to accomplish 
mighty works, to retain for ever the dew of its 
youth ? Give it the best chance, the sanction 
of Love. The Mind of the Master. 



December 13 

ALL machinery, however well conceived and 
enthusiastically worked, will be unblessed 
and useless unless the Church have spiritual 
aims, and be touched with heavenliness, unless 
she be cleansed from false ideals and a worldly 
spirit. The Cure of Souls. 



December 14 

WHAT has to be laid down in the strong- 
est terms and held in perpetual remem- 
brance is that Jesus gave in substance final 
truth, and that no one, apostle or saint, could 
or did add anything to the original deposit, 
however much he might expound or enforce it. 
This is the only position which secures a con- 
sistent and authoritative standard by which 
later teaching can be judged, and, apart from 
Jesus' own words, it is established by two 
arguments. One is probability or the fitness 
of things. Is it likely that Jesus, who came 
to declare the Divine Will and reveal the 
Father, would leave any truth of the first 
magnitude to be told by His servants ? It is 
to be expected that prophets should anticipate 
Jesus' Gospel and that apostles should apply 
it ; but it were amazing if either should sup- 
plement Jesus. The Mindo/tfu Master. 



December 15 

THE kingdom of God can only rule over 
willing hearts ; it has no helots within its 
borders. It advances by individual conversion, 
it stands in individual consecration. Laws can 
do but little for this cause; the sword less than 
nothing. The kingdom will come in a land 
when it has come in the hearts of the people — 
neither sooner nor later. tIu Mind of the Master. 

December 16 

♦' 'X/'OU hef done a beautiful deed this day, 
X Maister Carmichael ; and the grace of 
God must hef been exceeding abundant in your 
heart. It iss this man that asks your forgive- 
ness, for I wass full of pride, and did not speak 
to you as an old man should; but God iss my 
witness that I would hef plucked out my right 
eye for your sake. You will say every word 
God gives you, and I will take as much as God 
gives me, and there will be a covenant between 
us as long as we live." 

They knelt together on the earthen floor of 
that Highland cottage, the old school and the 
new, before one Lord, and the only difference 
in their prayers was that the young man prayed 
they might keep the faith once delivered unto 
the saints, while the burden of the old man's 
prayer was that they might be led into all 
truth. Beside ike Bonnie Brier Bush. 



December 17 

HE was married in that church, and there 
he offered his children to God. During 
his great trial it was the word he heard in that 
church which sustained him, and down its aisles 
he has carried the holy vessels of the Sacrament 
for thirty years. He is poor who has no sacred 
places on earth, and this is to the man as the 
gate of heaven. riie Cure ofSouU. 

December 18 

WHEN Jesus explained that He had kept 
nothing back, and yet had much more 
to give, He was not contradicting Himself, but 
only distinguishing between the substance and 
the development of truth. One might say with 
perfect accuracy that a seed contains the plant 
— stem, ears and full corn — and that when 
one gives the seed he gives all. Yet this is not 
the denial of the spring, and the summer, and 
the autumn time. After the same fashion it 
may be truly said that if any speaker should 
sow a living idea in the mind of a receptive 
hearer, and that idea were afterwards cast into 
various forms and carried into great actions, 
both words and deeds ought to be assigned to 
the original giver. The germ has the potency, 
it has also the very shape of all the coming 

life. T!ie Mbid of the Master. 



December 19 

SOME have not been content to hold Jesus 
anywhere save in the room which is 
nearest to the sky, which has windows to the 
grey east and the golden west, and all day long 
is full of warm light ; and when Jesus, wearied 
after many fmitless journeys, is brought within 
the door, He is satisfied, as one who has come 
home. This is sometimes called St. John's 
room, because he wrote pleasantly about it and 
the things he had seen from its windows ; and 
no one will gainsay that it is the Upper Room. 
For work is good, and righteousness is good, 
and knowledge is good, but best of all is love. 
And all the other rooms in the soul are gathered 
under love. Be sure he will not fail in sacri- 
fice who loves the Lord ; his conscience will 
be tender that is bathed in love, and no one 
can know deep mysteries who does not love. 
Love is Jesus'" chosen guest-chamber, and he 
that has Jesus for a guest has power, and good- 
ness, and truth, and God. xhe Upper Room. 

December 10 

No one can hope to teach religion, in even 
its simplest form, with permanent success, 
without a competent knowledge of theology, 
any more than a physician can practise medi- 
cine without a knowledge of physiology, or an 
engineer build a bridge who has not learned 
mathematics. T/te Cure o/ Souls. 



December 21 

NOTHING is easier than to create a reli- 
gion ; one only needs self-confidence and 
foolscap paper. An able Frenchman sat down 
in his study and produced Positivism, which 
some one pleasantly described as Catholicism 
minus Christianity. It stimulated conversation 
in superior circles for years, and only yesterday 
Mr. Frederic Harrison was explaining to Pro- 
fessor Huxley that this ingenious invention of 
M. Comte ought to be taken seriously. 

T^te Mind of the R [aster. 

December 22 

ONE of the most suggestive pictures of 
Italian Art represents the meeting of St. 
Dominic and St. Francis. St. Dominic belonged 
to that order which was charged with the 
development and conservation of doctrine, and 
who, on account of their theological bitterness 
and often unreasoning persecution, were called 
the " hounds of the Lord." St. Francis, as a 
great French critic declared, was the most 
beautiful Christian character since the days of 
Jesus, and it was he who revived religion. In 
this picture St. Dominic, the author and de- 
fender of dogma, and St. Francis, the humble 
disciple and exemplifier of Jesus Christ, have 
met, and, flinging their arms round one an- 
other's necks, they kiss each other. 

TAe Cure of Souls. 



December 23 

" "\ yl 7EEL, gin the woman leaves the man 
V V an' passes Intae the ither warld, is she 
deid, think ye, neeburs, an' is she no' his wife ? 
An' mair nor that, are the twa no' nearer than 
ever, an' . . . dearer ? 

" Ye '11 be sayin' in yir hearts, it 's no' for 
Jamie Soutar tae be speakin' like this, him 'at 's 
been alane a' his days 5 but a 've ma ain thochts, 
an' the deepest thing, ay, an' the bonniest, in 
the warld is a man an' a woman ane in love 

for ever. ' ' The Days of Anld Lang Syne. 

December 24 

FORESIGHT confers distinction on every 
effort of man, and raises it a degree. It 
elevates economy into providence ; it broadens 
business into enterprise ; with this addition 
politics become statesmanship, and literature 
prophecy. Life gains perspective and atmos- 
phere ; it is reinforced by unseen hopes and 
rewards. The burden of the future becomes a 
balance in life, tempering the intoxication of 
joy with the cares of to-morrow, and softening 
the bitterness of sorrow with its compensations. 
Foresight, sending on its spies into the land 
of promise, returns to brace and cheer every 
power of the soul, and becomes the mother of 
all hardy and strenuous virtues, of self-restraint, 
and self-denial, of sacrifice and patience. 

TJie Mind of the Master. 



December 25 

THE incarnation was an act of sacrifice, so 
patent and so brilliant that it has arrested 
every mind. It was sacrifice unto the lowest 
and therefore life in the highest, an outburst and 
climax of Life. But Creation is also Sacrifice, 
since it is God giving Himself; and Providence 
is Sacrifice, since it is God revealing Himself. 
Grace is Sacrifice, since it is God girding Him- 
self and serving. With God, as Jesus declares 
Him, Life is an eternal procession of gifts, a 
costly outpouring of Himself, an unwearied suf- 
fering of Love. To live is to love, to love is 
to suffer, and to suffer is to rejoice with a joy 
that fills the heart of God from age to age. 

The Mind of the Master. 

December 26 

IT is good to remember that, however cold 
and detached from life any doctrine may 
seem to us in our day, it must once have ex- 
pressed the profound conviction of believing 
Christians, and that the kernel contained in its 
husk is eternal. There is no doctrine of the 
first order which does not enshrine a living idea 
of religion. Tfie Cure of Souls. 



December 27 

SIX disciples, and for them all one Lord, who 
unveils Judas, sending him forth to finish 
his work and to die of remorse ; who rebukes 
the self-confidence of Peter and foretells his bit- 
ter humiliation ; who takes Thomas by the hand 
and leads him through the darkness ; who offers 
to Philip the sure evidence of His life and works ; 
who loosens the bonds of Judas not Iscariot, and 
brings him into a large place ; who satisfies John 
with Himself and His love, — one glorious 
Christ who is unto each disciple what he needed 
and more than he imagined, a place of "broad 
rivers and streams," Judge, Saviour, Prophet, 
Master, Deliverer, Friend. The Upper Room. 

December 28 

JESUS also believed in man, and therein He 
differed from the pessimists of His own day. 
The Pharisees regarded the mass of people as 
moral refuse, the unavoidable waste from the 
finished product of Pharisaism. With Jesus 
the common people were the raw material for 
the Kingdom of God, rich in the possibilities 
of sainthood. The Mhid oftlie Master. 



December 29 

IF a minister feels it his duty to advance any 
new view, iiis style of speech ought to be 
especially cautious and considerate, because he 
must give a shock, to many good people, and is 
in danger of shaking the faith of some. When 
a liberal in theology is bitter and intolerant, it 
is a satire on his position, and any disaster which 
follows has been earned. TJie Cure of Souls. 



December 30 

IT is the fond imagination of many pious 
minds that the basis of spiritual unity must 
lie in the reason, and stand in uniformity of 
doctrine. This unfortunate idea has been the 
poisoned spring of all the dissensions that have 
torn Christ's body, from the day when Eastern 
Christians fought in the streets about His Divin- 
ity to the long years when Europe was drenched 
in blood about His lovely Sacraments. It is 
surely a very ghastly irony that the immense 
sorrow of the world has been infinitely increased 
by the fierce distractions of that society which 
Jesus intended to be the peacemaker, and that 
Christian divisions should have arisen from the 
vain effort after an ideal which Jesus never once 
had within His vision. The Mind of ttie Master. 



December 31 

" A 'M ready noo, an' a '11 get ma kiss when 
1\. mither comes; a' wish she wud come, 
for a 'm tired an' wantin' tae sleep. 

" Yon's her step . . . an' she's carryin' a 
licht in her hand; a' see it through the door. 

" Mither ! a' kent ye wudna forget yir laddie, 
for ye promised tae come, an' a 've feenished ma 
psalm. 

" And in God's house for evermore 
My dwelling-place shall be. 

'*Gie me the kiss, mither, for a've been 
waitin' for ye, an' a '11 sune be asleep." 

The grey morning light fell on Drumsheugh, 
still holding his friend's cold hand, and staring 
at a hearth where the fire had died down into 
white ashes; but the peace on the doctor's face 
was of one who rested from his labours. 

Beside tlie Bonnie Brier Bush. 



THE Kingdom of God cometh to a man 
when he sets up Jesus' Cross in his heart, 
and begins to live what Mr. Laurence Oliphant 
used to call "the life." It passes on its way 
when that man rises from table and girds him- 
self and serves the person next him. Yester- 
day the kingdom was one man, now it is a 
group. From the one who washes to the one 
whose feet are washed the kingdom grows and 
multiplies. It stands around us on every side, 
— not in Pharisees nor in fanatics, not in noise 
nor tumult, but in modest and Christ-like men. 
One can see it in their faces, and catch it in the 
tone of their voices. And if one has eyes to 
see and ears to hear, then let him be of good 
cheer, for the kingdom of God is come. It is 
the world-wide state, whose law is the Divine 
will, whose members obey the spirit of Jesus, 
whose strength is goodness, whose heritage is 
God. Tlie Mind of the Master. 



